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RUSSIA 
IN REVOLUTION 



BY 

G. H. PERRIS 

AUTHOR OF 

"LEO TOLSTOY, THE GRAND MUJIK," "THE FURTHER MEMOIRS OF MARIE 
BASHKIRTSEFF," "THE EASTERN CRISIS AND BRITISH POLICY," 

ETC. 



WITH ILLUSTRATIONS 



" What is passing at present is not a simple riot, but a revolution." — Prince 
Troubetskoy, President of the Moscow Zemstvo, to Prince Sviatopolk- 
Mirsky, December, 1904. 



NEW YORK 
BRENTANO'S 

1905 






K *\ #•• 



'< 7 



RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 




£>natawe<£ / iy JJ-WadcUi 



affect// e JiOT&rvu fc/Oy, dfe6o0e> ^yvicrJoktUe^ . 



<t 



<i\ 



TO 

FELIX 

CONVICT, POET, AND STATESMAN 



PREFACE 

We have watched the early stages, and are about to 
witness the culmination, of a national movement that 
will probably loom as large in after history as do those 
which resulted in the establishment of the French 
Republic and the United States of America. Writing- 
in mid-crisis (for the mind will not wait while events 
reach a complete development), of a subject so large 
and in some aspects so strange, one cannot hope to 
have attained perfect accuracy of detail or perspective. 
If rapidly written, however, this sketch of the causes, 
character, and course of the Russian Revolution repre- 
sents a good many years of observation and study. 
Moreover, while much space has been given to a recital 
of personal experiences illustrating the quality of 
Russian manhood, the heroism of the revolutionary 
leaders, and the tragic nature of the struggle for 
freedom, it is hoped that these narratives will not 
obscure the fundamental argument that the Revolution 
is no mere clash of personalities, but is essentially the 
fulfilment of an irresistible economic process. Thus I 
have sought to show, in the first place, that the historic 
autocracy has degenerated during the last two reigns 
into a lawless and incapable oligarchy ; and, then, that 
the oligarchy is being undermined by the very economic 

vii 



viii PREFACE 

forces which it brought into existence for its own 
enrichment. In this part of the book I have been 
chiefly indebted to Eussian and British official publi- 
cations. 

For information as to the history and psychology 
of the revolutionary movement, and for other details, 
I am indebted to my exile friends — especially the late 
Sergius Stepniak and the late Col. Lavrov, Mr. Volk- 
hovsky, Mr. Tchaykovsky, and Dr. Soskice ; to the 
files of Free Russia, La Tribune Busse, and the publi- 
cations of the Russian secret press ; and to friends in 
Russia whom it would be inconvenient to name. A 
few passages, including a letter written in Moscow on 
the eve of the recent crisis, have appeared in the Daily 
Chronicle and other journals. 

London, 

April 15, 1905. 



PAGE 



CONTENTS 

PART I 

A BLACK HERITAGE 
CHAPTER I 

MISE-EN-SCBNE 

1. Natural conditions : Geographical, climatic, economic — 2. Historical 
conditions: Early Russian democracy — Byzantinism — Under the 
Mongols — The Tsardom — Expansion — The Zemsky Sobor — The 
modern State — The growing revolt — Reaction — 3. East and West : 
At Nijni Novgorod — The Fair and the Exposition — New forces — 
4. On the Eve : War, famine, superstition, despotism ... 3 

CHAPTER II 

THE OLIGARCHY 

Structure of the State : The official theory examined — " Autocracy " 
impossible — Council of the Empire — The Senate — Committee of 
Ministers — The Ministries — The Holy Synod — Lack of guarante es 
— Confusion of functions — Bureaucrats and favourites — Provincial 
administration — Governors and police 30 

CHAPTER III 

THE LAND WITHOUT LAW 

Thousands of laws, but no law — Destruction of the judicial reforms — 
The Code — Secret " laws " — Persecution — Revelations at Konigs- 
berg — The Penal Code — Heresy — Political offences — Courts- 
martial — " Administrative order " 47 

ix 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER IV 

THE UNDERWORLD I MENDEL ROSENBAUAl's STORY 



PAGE 



Overcrowding of prisons — Rosenbaum's offence and arrest — Sixteen 
months in the fortress of St. Peter and St. Paul — The inquisition — 
Solitude and silence — By etape — The forwarding prison — Pande- 
monium at Vilna — The prison idiot — Escape — A workman's lot — 
The case of Angela Karpouzi 64 



CHAPTER V 

THE OLD BASTILLE 

The St. Petersburg Fortress — Kropotkin's description — Some results — 
Case of Maria Vetrova — Her arrest and mysterious death — Was it 
suicide? 80 



CHAPTER VI 

ANNALS OP SCHLUSSELBURG 

The new Bastille — Summary account of fifty-four prisoners : two shot, 
seven suicides, six insane, twenty other deaths — Revolutionary 
leaders : Kletochnikov, Dolgushin, Myshkin, Shchedrin, Grachevsky, 
Sophia Ginsburg, Lopatin, P.S. Polivanov, Vera Figner . . 88 

CHAPTER VII 

SIBERIAN EXILE AS IT IS 

The modifications of June, 1900 — Exile analyzed — Recent prison 
scandals — Archangel — The new Arctic exile settlements — Condi- 
tions at Kolymsk — Mark Broido's story : the exile road — A lock- 
up — New rigors (1903) — Hardships by road and river — The latest 
v affray in Yakutsk — Broido's escape 101 



CHAPTER VIII 

Russia's " ile du diable " 

Sakhalin : the convict system — " Unfit for Colonization " — Corporal 
Punishment : " politicals " flogged — Official exposures — Barbarous 
punishments — The system of compulsory concubinage . . .119 



CONTENTS xi 



CHAPTER IX 

THE BUDGET 

PAGE 

Estimates for 1905 — The " Treasury Balances," their origin and amount 
— " Ordinary " and " Extraordinary " Budgets : a ten years' balance 
— Normal revenue and expenditure analyzed .... 129 



CHAPTER X 

DEBT AND DRINK 

Increase of Debt : £500 millions in 1889, £750 millions in 1905— 
Assets — Drink monopoly the only profitable part of State trading 
system — Kailway extension : the Siberian line — Cost of the 
Kailway policy 138 



CHAPTER XI 

THE TARIFF 

M. Witte's record — Disillusion — Forced industrialism — 1877 and 
subsequent tariffs — Official claims and a typical result — £12^ 
millions for the benefit of the cotton lords — :Growth of leading 
industries — Drain of wheat exports — Estimated cost of Protec- 
tionism = £100 millions a year — Foreign industries — History of 
the Sugar trust 144 



CHAPTER XII 

A SICK SOCIETY 

Famines, 1873-1905 — Discouragement of education and crippling of 
agriculture — Siberian communications — Effects of the war — 
Instances of corruption — Contract scandals — The Bed Cross 
peculations : a Grand Duchess in tears — Compensations . .160 



CHAPTER XIII 

THE FINAL CRIME 

Pretexts for the Japanese war — Manchurian and Korean agreements — 
Statements of claim — The tale of bloodshed — The Army : 
effects of Kussian policy — Coercion, ignorance, and corruption . 169 



xii CONTENTS 

PART II 

PIONEERS OF REVOLUTION 

CHAPTER XIV 

THE PROPAGANDISTS, 1870-74 : NICHOLAS TCHAYKOVSKY's 

NARRATIVE 

Two phases of the revolutionary movement : 1870-85, and 1890-1905 
— " Nihilism " and the democratic revival — Peter Lavrov's life and 
opinions — Nicholas Tchaykovsky : early life — The peasantry — 
School and university — Netchayev's conspiracy — The first propa- 
gandist circles — Their method of work and leaders — " To the 
People " — Arrest and imprisonment 185 

CHAPTER XV 

THE TSAR'S VENGEANCE : MADAME KOVALSKY's NARRATIVE 

Some leading personalities — "Trial of the 193" — Katherine Bresh- 
kovsky: early life and revolutionary activity — In Siberia — Back 
at work after twenty years — Elizabeth Kovalsky : as school teacher 
— Arrest, trial, and exile — Escape and recapture — The events at 
Kara — Hunger strikes and suicides — Mme. Kovalsky's protest and 
removal — Flogging of Mme. Sigida 207 

CHAPTER XVI 

FELIX VOLKHOVSKY 

Student at Moscow : first arrest — Seven months in the " Third Section " 
— The investigation — Second arrest : two years in prison — Tried 
and acquitted — Third arrest : another year in the St. Petersburg 
Fortress — Effects of solitary confinement— Trial and protest — 
Years of exile — Escape — Culmination of the movement — The 
Tsaricides 225 

CHAPTER XVII 

SERGIUS STEPNIAK AND TERRORISM 

His early life — Among the peasantry : Capture and escape — As con- 
spirator — In England ; his work and death — The exile's friends — 
Attitude towards terrorism — Some tributes - 236 



CONTENTS xiii 

CHAPTER XVIII 

THE NEW GENERATION : DR. SOSKICE ; MARK BROIDO 



PAGE 



The meaning of University " disturbances " — A new experiment in 
coercion : students drafted into the army — Growing agitation : 
official statistics, 1894-1903 — Narrative of Dr. David Soskice — 
Revolutionary activity — A year in the Fortress — " How I became 
a Revolutionist " : Mark Broido's narrative . . . . 253 



CHAPTER XIX 

THE RISE OP THE LABOUR MOVEMENT : FATHER GAPON 

Growth of the industrial town population — Strikes of 1884-5 — Labour 
laws of 1886 and 1893 — Wages and hours of labour — Great strikes 
of 1896-97 — Social Democratic Labour Party, founded 1898 : its 
policy — Clandestine literature — Thousands of arrests — Zubatov and 
his official Unions — Father Gapon 281 



PART III 

THE AWAKENING 
CHAPTER XX 

THE END OP PLEHVE 

A new crisis — Plehve's character and career — M. Witte — Secret police 
— Interregnum : Prince Sviatopolk-Mirsky — Zemstvo movement 
— Prince Troubetskoy — Reaction again : the December manifestoes 295 



CHAPTER XXI 

"BLOODY SUNADY": A BROKEN IDOL 

The Putilov works strike: extension throughout St. Petersburg — 
Petition and proposed deputation to the Tsar — Representations to 
Ministers — The massacre — Intellectuals imprisoned — Trepov as 
Prefect — Anarchy in the provinces — " Magna Charta " canards . 307 



xiv CONTENTS 



CHAPTER XXII 

TERRORISTS AND REFORMERS 



PAGE 



Kevolutionary Socialist Party : its agrarian policy and propaganda — The 
revival of terrorism : recent assassinations — The " Organization of 
Combat " — Sazonov's statement — The Gershouni trial — Murder of 
the Grand Duke Sergius — Vladimir Korolenko : his punishment — 
Maxim Gorky ; arrest and imprisonment 319 



CHAPTER XXIII 

THE PROSPECTS OP THE REVOLUTION 

The widening discontent — Disappearance of the Tsar — Is a coup d'etat 
possible ? — Sedition in the army — Effects of the war — Prospects of 
a jacquerie — The difficulty of making peace — Insolvency of the 
Oligarchy — Financial situation after a year of war — The balance of 
trade — Eecent loans and the debt — The " Humbert Safe " of the 
gold reserve — Costs of the war — Conclusion .... 337 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



PAGE 



Portrait : Sergius Stepniak. {After Felix Mosclieles.) Frontispiece 

A Street Scene To face 20 

Portraits : The Tsar, Grand Duke Sergius, Grand 

Duke Vladimir „ 30 

Portraits: M. de Witte, M. de Plehve, General Trepov „ 36 

After the Flogging. {After Pasternak) „ 54 

Prisoners and thetr Friends. {After Pasternak) „ 70 

Portraits : D. Eogachev, Tutchev,* Voinaralsky, 

Adrian Mikhailov, Baron Stromberg, Stephanovitch „ 94 

Portraits: N. Lopatin, Vera Figner, H. Myshkin, N. 

Shchedrin, Dolgushin, P. S. Polivanov „ 98 

The Exile's Death. {After Malchevshy) „ 102 

Party of Political Exiles : Archangel . . . . „ 106 

The Besieged Exiles in Yakutsk, March, 1904 : 
Tessler, Teflov, Perasttz, M. Broido, M. Lurie, 

kurnatovsky, s. komay, eve broido, s. fried . . „ 116 

Flogging with the Plet, Sakhalin „ 126 



* Not referred to in the text. He was arrested and exiled to Siberia as 
one of the leaders of the " Party of Popular Right," which sprang up in 
1894-95 and was almost immediately extinguished, nearly all its active 
members being caught and arrested . 

xv 



xvi ILLUSTRATIONS 



PAGE 



Portraits: Peter Lavrov, Peter Kropotkin, L. Shichko, 

D. Soskice, L. Goldenberg Toface 190 

A Mujik, Yasnaya Polyana „ 202 

An Evening Party. {After Mahovshy) „ 202 

Portraits : Vera Zassulitch, Sophie Perovsky, Eliza- 
beth Koyalsky, Maria Kovalevsky, P. Ivanova, Hope 
Sigida . „ 220 > 

Portraits: Felix Volkhovsky, Katherine Breshkovsky, 

Nicholas Tchaykovsky „ 226 

Portraits : Maxim Gorky, L. Andreyev, V. Korolenko . „ 332 

m. pobyedonostsev, prince d. troubetskoy, and prince 

Galitzin » 344 • 



PART I 
A BLACK HERITAGE 



CHAPTER I 

mise-en-sc£ne 

1. Natural Conditions. 

Some of the richest lands on earth, inhabited by some 
of the poorest peoples — such is the domain of Nicholas 
II., styled Autocrat of all the Russias. But Nature 
and History are the only real autocrats. Let us recall 
the primary conditions of Russian life, before we plunge 
into the details of the great drama that has lately 
caught the attention of the outer world. 

As it stands to-day, the Empire occupies about one- 
sixth part of the land-surface of the globe, or two-thirds 
of the European and one-third of the Asiatic continents. 
Of this immense territory only one quarter can, even in 
the widest sense, be described as mother-country, the 
remainder consisting of lands of conquest and coloniza- 
tion. The British Empire alone, in modern or ancient 
times, has outmatched its prodigious bulk ; but there 
is this essential difference, among many others : Mari- 
time separation has tended to preserve the diversity of 
the several parts of the British Empire, to foster liberty 
and autonomy, to stimulate international commerce and 
the modern forms of industry. Territorial continuity 
in Russia has aided the growth of centralization and 
arbitrary power amid communities chiefly dependent 
upon agriculture and internal exchange. In the ancient 
world, before the era of inventions, territorial continuity 

3 B 2 



4 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

was a great advantage; to-day, little England, fog- 
bound in a corner of the North Atlantic, is in close 
touch with every part of the earth, draws to herself 
the good things of the most various lands, while Russia 
stagnates in her vast isolation. Her northern shores are 
permanently ice-bound, except in the White Sea, which 
is open for three summer months ; her Pacific coast is 
closed by ice and fog during the greater part of the 
year ; even the northern Black Sea ports are frozen in 
winter ; and, in the Baltic, Libau alone is almost always 
open. The Chinese frontier, the longest land boundary 
on the globe, is far removed from the great masses of 
population of the two empires, and can never rival the 
southern sea in the attraction of trade. All this un- 
kindness of Nature is capped by the stupidity of man. 
There are abundant communications with the West — 
river- courses, canals, roads, and railways — but they are 
half blocked by the erection of tariff barriers the most 
formidable known to Protectionist records. Finally, 
scores of millions of pounds and hundreds of thousands 
of lives have been sacrificed in the vain endeavour to 
hold an ice-free fort in the Far East, not as a com- 
mercial outlet — if that had been all, there would have 
been no war with Japan — but as a fortress from which 
to organize new conquests of territory. 

Except on its West and South European, and its 
Central and East Asiatic borderlands, Russia has no 
mountains, and few hills. The very slight central 
elevation from which the waters of the Volga run to 
the south-east, those of the Duna to the west, and 
those of the Dnieper and Don to the south, is im- 
portant as the source and division of these great 
river systems. Generally, however, the country is 
strongly contrasted with the remainder of Europe by its 
flatness. The plain stretches out interminably eastward 



MISE-EN-SCENE 5 

and westward, the Urals — a line of low, rounded 
ridges through which a railway is easily carried — not 
constituting any substantial interruption. Lacking 
heights and valleys, coastline, and such a moderating 
influence as the Gulf Stream, climate and scenery both 
differ widely from those of the West. Apart from the 
regular seasonal changes, which come about more 
suddenly, there is a likeness of condition in widely 
differing latitudes, from the land of the reindeer to that 
of the camel, which gives some show of reason to the 
claim that this land was " destined to unity." Cold 
and heat are everywhere suffered in their extremes ; 
winds from the polar sea or eastern sands sweep over 
great stretches of the continent. The rainfall is small, 
and rivers on which one can drive sledges in winter 
disappear in the summer heat. In the coldest month, 
January, the mean temperature varies from — 3° (Centi- 
grade) on the Black Sea to -30° in the north-west 
provinces. For a period differing, according to the 
region, between three and seven months of the year, 
the thermometer is below zero, so that snow covers 
Eussia at least for a part of the winter; and as this 
temperature locks up not only the rivers, but also the 
great lakes and even the inland seas, the climate of 
winter is more uniformly trying than that of summer. 
The mean July temperature ranges between -{-15° and 
+ 25°; and a warm summer, with an even rainfall, 
makes culture of cereals throughout the greater part of 
the country possible without artificial irrigation. In 
the Western provinces, the comparatively softer winter 
and more temperate summer favour winter crops ; in 
the East and Siberia spring sowing is the rule. The 
sudden break-up of the long frost in a short, sharp 
spring, and the release from the idle indoor life of 
winter, with doors and windows hermetically sealed 



6 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

and the great stove ever hot, to the brightness of the 
flower-strewn fields and the green forests, has provided 
native poets and painters with some of their happiest 
inspirations. 

Leaving aside the treeless moorlands or tundras of 
the extreme north, which are inhabited only by a few 
half-savage hunters and fishermen, the sand or saline 
wastes of Central Asia, and the mountain forests of 
Caucasia, we may divide the immense central plain of 
Eussia, with all its unity of climate, into two broadly 
distinguished belts — the northern, and rather the larger, 
that of forests and lakes, extending from the 65th to 
the 53rd degrees of latitude ; and that of the steppes, 
extending, say, from Kiev southward, and broadening 
somewhat as it reaches the dreary plains of Transcaspia. 
In the former region, known in Siberia as the taiga, 
which stretches from the Harz Mountains in Germany 
right away into Asia, virgin forests of birch, pine, 
fir, and larch, spring from boggy or sandy soil ; while 
plentiful river-courses carry down the needed wood and 
water in exchange for the grain of the South. Agri- 
culture struggles against adverse conditions ; and only 
in the few industrial centres, especially about Moscow 
and the mines of the Ural, is there any great increase of 
population and prosperity. The zone of the steppes, 
extending from Bessarabia to Trans-Baikalia, is practi- 
cally treeless, but very fertile. The broad rivers that 
flow through it, many of them joined by networks of 
canals, are Nature's compensation for other rigours. 
The famous tchernoziom or black-mould, which is found 
from the frontiers of Calicia and Koumania to the 
southern end of the Urals, makes this region one of the 
world's great granaries. 

Here, then, are the three natural resources of the 
land which most vitally affect the character and 



MISE-EN-SCENE 7 

activities of the people — its woods, its waters, and its 
wheat-fields. Of the rest we need say little except 
that, in one part or other of the Empire, almost every 
variety of mineral, vegetable, and animal wealth is to 
be found. Coal and iron fields occur in parts of the 
central plain, as well as in Poland, the Urals, Finland, 
and the Don basin. Salt is plentiful ; and the oil 
supplies of the Caspian region are of immeasurable 
value. There is zinc in Poland, tin and copper in 
Finland, manganese in Ekaterinoslav and Kherson, 
marble and granite in Finland, lead in the Caucasus. 
The Ural district is one of the richest fields of minerals 
— from gold and precious stones downward — in the 
world ; and the hidden wealth of Siberia is only just 
beginning to be discovered. The beet crop leaves a 
substantial surplus of sugar to be exported after 
supplying the home demand. Tobacco, vines, tea, and 
cotton are being cultivated in the southern and central 
Asiatic provinces. Cattle raising and horse breeding 
are leading occupations in the south and south-west, 
and dairying in Poland, the north-west provinces, and 
Siberia. As over a third of the surface of European 
Eussia is estimated to be wooded (two-thirds of this 
portion belonging to the State), the importance of 
forestry is obvious. Eussia is still an unspoiled land 
for the sportsman ; and her freshwater fisheries are 
peculiarly valuable. 

But if forty-five millions of people can live in in- 
creasing comfort on our own comparatively barren 
islands, though there must be extremes of cold and 
heat why should there ever be famine in these immense 
and thinly peopled territories of which Nicholas II. is 
over-lord ? Evidently, Nature is not the only, perhaps 
not the hardest, task-master. We must look further. 



8 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

2. Historical Conditions. 

" The immense territory of Russia," says an official 
writer, M. A. Poutilov,* "which includes the most 
diverse races, having nothing in common, neither 
language, nor civilization, nor religious beliefs, forms, 
from a political point of view, an indivisible unity. 
Certain parts of the Empire till recently formed auto- 
nomous States having their own historic past. At 
present these countries constitute with Russia a single 
political organization ; the numerous sovereign titles 
belonging to the Emperor of Russia are only historical 
souvenirs recalling the progressive extension of the 
territory of the Russian State. All the political insti- 
tutions of the Empire, affecting millions of subjects, 
are administratively centralized, and are moved by the 
will of the Autocratic Monarch alone. The system of 
absolute monarchy is, in fact, deeply rooted in the 
national history, and closely bound up with the geo- 
graphical situation of the country. In measure as the 
Muscovite State grew and became consolidated into 
the great Russian Empire, the autocratic power of the 
sovereigns became stronger, and administrative centrali- 
zation, closely bound to the absolute power, grew and 
was consolidated with it. Thanks to the policy of the 
Muscovite Grand Dukes, the country was unified, 
despite its being open on all sides and subject to 
repeated invasion ; it could only defend and preserve 
its independence by giving all its forces into a single 
hand. The long struggle against West and East 

* Essay on the " Political Constitution " in a composite volume edited by 
M. W. de Kovalevsky, adjoint of the Ministry of Finance, and published by the 
Kussian Government, in French and Kussian, under the title " Russia at the 
End of the Nineteenth Century." I shall often quote from this volume, as 
presenting a recent official statement of facts and deductions, using the French 
edition (Paris : Paul Dupont, 1900). 



MISE-EN-SCENE 9 

accelerated the concentration of power. This is one of the 
most characteristic phenomena of the history of Russia." 

This plea from history is a familiar feature of every 
orthodox defence of the auto-bureaucratic regime. But 
a very short review of the facts will serve to show that 
the truth it contains has long since lost its validity ; 
that, in fact, it is long since Eussia proper secured her 
independence ; that the chief growth of despotic 
power occurred afterwards, and was directed to a quite 
different end, that of conquest and exploitation ; and 
that, so far from preserving unity, it is now, especially 
under the pressure of the newer economic problems, 
an influence tending to disintegration and even chaos 
in the State. 

Eussian history may, for our present purpose, be 
divided into five periods. The first of these covers the 
growth of the Slavic principalities down to the Mongol 
invasion. Gathered round the overland route from the 
Baltic to the Black Sea and Bosphorus, with important 
trade centres at Novgorod and Kiev, spreading down to 
the mouth of the Dniester, and westward thence into 
Poland and Pomerania, these peaceful groups long 
enjoyed a simple agrarian communism under their local 
rulers, easily removable soldiers of fortune who inter- 
fered little with the local authority of the mir and 
vetche* Western carpet-baggers talk of the Slav 
being incapable of self-government. The fact is that 
down to this day the humble mujik has enjoyed a 
power over the essential conditions of life, political and 
economic, such as the Western peasant has not possessed 
since the dawn of the Middle Ages ; and in the form 

* See "Modern Customs and Ancient Laws of Russia," by Maxime 
Kovalevsky (London, 1891) ; " The Empire of the Tsars," by Anatole 
Leroy-Beaulieu, vol. i. (London, 1893) ; and " Russia under the Tsars," by 
Stepniak (London, 1886). 



io RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

of the artel or co-operative society he maintains his 
primitive collectivism even in the strongholds of modern 
machine industry. The State, on the other hand, was 
from the first tainted with alien and anti-popular 
tendencies. The virus of Byzantinism was even more 
deadly in the East than that of Romanism in the West. 
It gave a simple pagan people something of culture, 
something of ethics and philosophy, but it gave these 
in a degraded form, and one peculiarly mischievous in 
that it cut them off from Western thought by its 
separate alphabet and language, art and political ideals. 
Even worse, it set upon them the doom of an insane 
State ambition. First Kiev, then Moscow was to 
become the new Byzantium, the capital of a yet greater 
Eastern Empire. The dream of a vast spiritual dominion 
survives even to this day ; and, while we Western 
heretics are smiling over the unction of the Tsar and 
the philippics of the Procurator of the Holy Synod, we 
should remember that they represent a theocracy not 
only the most numerous in the world, but the more 
powerful because it is subject within its own sphere to 
no such open criticism and organized rivalry as that 
which Protestantism has opposed to Romanism in the 
West. Everywhere, and all through the centuries, 
State and Church have advanced together, mutually 
helpful, mutually dependent. It is not a single but a 
double centralization. Yet as the village community, 
long antedating serfdom and now surviving it, has 
maintained itself through the centuries against the 
central despotism, so popular dissent has held its 
ground against all persecutions, and by constant in- 
stinctive reversion to the simplicity of the G-ospels now 
sets an example of democratic rationalism even to the 
lands of the Reformation. On the religious side, as on 
the political, it may be said that, while the Orthodox 



MISE-EN-SCENE n 

(which does not even pretend to be a Catholic) Church 
helped at the outset to maintain the national spirit 
amongst the invader, that justification has long dis- 
appeared. Its great body of secular clergy has not 
reconciled it with the spirit of the people. It may still 
be useful as a means of bringing pagan tribes into 
subjection, but the educated class and the workmen of 
the ruling race are nearly always rationalists, and the 
more enlightened peasant is either an open noncon- 
formist or conforms only outwardly and for convenience. 
The imposing structure remains, but the life-spirit has 
slowly ebbed away. Father Gapon, prison priest and 
revolutionary leader, was an isolated phenomenon signifi- 
cant only for its rarity. 

At the opening of the thirteenth century colonization 
had extended the power of the small Slavic republics at 
the cost of the Finnish tribes in the North, and of the 
Tartars and Turks in the East. The expansion had 
reached the middle Volga region, and Nijni (or Lower) 
Novgorod had just been founded, when it was violently 
terminated by the Northern edge of the crescent of 
Ottoman conquest. Russia saved the West from the 
Mongols at a cost which, prolonged through two and a 
half centuries of crushing tyranny, has left plain marks 
upon the national character. Only the religion and the 
village commune were left, and these became the yet 
more highly treasured possessions of the people. By 
the middle of the fifteenth century the Muscovite 
nobles had become partly Tartarized in blood, and 
thoroughly imbued with the Asiatic idea of rule. The 
use of the knout and the plet began at this period ; the 
former was abolished sixty years ago, the latter is still 
in use. Ivan the Great established the Tsardom by 
suppressing the petty princes and the nobles, and by 
defeating the Tartar Khans on the lower Volga and the 



12 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

Lithuanian invaders on the West. Very soon, for good 
and ill, Eussia was to have no independent nobility ; to 
be an aristocrat was simply to be an obedient servant 
of the Tsar. 

So far, the movement towards a central absolutism 
had some flavour of national liberation. Beggars cannot 
be choosers, and a people that had been for two hundred 
and forty years under a hard alien yoke — especially 
when the primary natural factors of life predisposed it 
to patient endurance as definitely as our insularity and 
our temperate climate have disposed us to independence 
and an equable activity — would be thankful for the 
smallest blessings that came to them from Moscow. 
The power given for defence was now, as in lands and 
times presumedly wiser, turned to the very different 
purpose of conquest. Ivan III. had married a niece of 
the last Greek Emperor and assumed the Imperial 
insignia, the double eagle; Ivan IV., the Terrible, took 
the full Caesarian title, and proceeded to eclipse all 
Byzantine records in cruelty, treachery, and superstition. 
The notes of this third period are the consolidation of 
the Muscovite State and the beginning of an expansion 
which offers points both of likeness and of contrast to 
the then just commencing colonization and conquest of 
America. While all the energy of West Europe was 
being turned toward the Atlantic, all the energy of 
Eussia was being drawn in the opposite direction ; and 
the hands of a race, as of an individual, surely receive 
the imprint of its predominant task. The " Grand 
Tartary" of the old maps was gradually submerged. 
As the Scottish highlanders went to Virginia, so the 
Don Cossacks struck out into Asia. The capture of 
Kazan in 1552 gave Moscow the key to the chief artery 
of the great central plain, and twenty years later 
Yermak opened the way into Siberia. If the Americans 



MISE-EN-SCENE 13 

of European race now number eighty millions, and 
the Russians in Asia only half as many, it must be 
remembered not only that communications in the one 
case were much more difficult, and conditions of climate 
and soil less favourable, than in the other, but also that 
expansion was conditioned in the East by a central 
despotism of growing strength, in the West by almost 
complete freedom guaranteed by democratic institu- 
tions. During what Russian historians call the "time of 
troubles," which filled most of the seventeenth century, 
Boris Gudonov practically founded serfdom by a tem- 
porary measure, that afterwards became permanent, 
attaching the vagrant peasant to the soil. But instincts 
of liberty were not dead among the pastoral Slavs. From 
its first session in 1550 to its last in 1698, the Zemsky 
Sobor had an important though intermittent influence. 
The first Romanov Tsar, Michael, was elected by this 
National Council in 1613 ; and in the following reign 
occurred the great movement of religious dissent, the 
immediate cause of which was the arbitrary innovations 
of the Patriarch Nikon. 

In its fourth historical period Russia takes rank, 
under Peter the Great and his successors, as a European 
State, with a standing army, navies on the Baltic and 
Black Seas, and a Germanized administration. On the 
one hand, public works, literature, and art are created ; 
on the other, there is a long succession of court scandals 
and plots of the grossest description. Serfdom is 
extended and hardened, the press censorship begins, 
and the secret police become a power in the land. 
Finland, Poland, Ukraina, Georgia, Bessarabia, are 
added to the Empire by force or fraud. But a second 
attempt to obtain a constitution, in 1730, and the 
jacquerie of Pugachov in 1773, prove that the spirit of 
liberty is still not extinguished. 



14 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

And, in fact, our last period is largely occupied by 
the struggle of a growing national self-consciousness 
against the antiquated despotism which is the heavy 
heritage left to the Russian people by nature and 
history. The struggle is at first impeded by the 
necessity of national defence and is afterwards weakened 
by the drain of colonization and conquest ; yet out of 
these very difficulties has been drawn new strength. 
Every generation now sees a new and each time a 
stronger movement of revolt. The military rising of 
the Decembrists in 1825, and the insurrections of the 
Poles in 1830-1831 and 1863, led to fresh excesses of 
tyranny at home and conquest on the borderlands ; but 
they sowed seed that fell not wholly on barren soil. A 
more general awakening after the Crimean War made 
necessary a series of judicial and administrative reforms 
and, above all, the emancipation of the serfs, when the 
land of nearly half of the peasantry (the other half, the 
already " free " crown peasants, being differently treated) 
was handed over to the village communities (mir) 
subject to a payment, for forty-nine years, of redemption 
dues of six per cent, on the amount of the purchase 
money ; while at the same time a million and a half 
domestic serfs received their liberty without any grants 
of land. It is in the nature of a despotism to spoil any 
such undertaking ; and in this case the price paid was 
often far in excess of the value of the land ; the burden 
of taxes and redemption dues, even when reduced, has 
been excessive ; and the condition of the rural popula- 
tion has been so bad that in some recent years famine 
and epidemics of cholera and other diseases have made 
terrible ravages among them. 

Every year of the past generation has produced 
some new proof of the folly of the idea that the many 
radical reforms now needed can be carried through 



MISE-EN-SCENE 15 

without the active aid of the people themselves. 
Reactionary influences have too tight a hold upon the 
Court of St. Petersburg to be seriously affected by any 
spasm of personal zeal in the monarch. For thirty-five 
years the war between an infatuated State and a slowly 
awakening people has been waged with increasing 
violence. The undoing of the reforms of the sixties 
provoked the first revolutionary movement whose 
course I shall presently trace. Alexander III., honest, 
virtuous, obstinate, moody, had no brains for such a 
situation, and fell an easy prey to the alarmist sug- 
gestions, the mystical exhortations, of a Dmitri Tolstoy 
and a Pobyedonostsev. The great legislative achieve- 
ments of the reign were the laws of July 12, 1889, and 
June 11, 1890, restricting the rights of juries, abolishing 
the elective justices of the peace except in the chief 
cities, instituting the order of rural commanders (zemski 
nachalniki) from among the local nobility — to whom 
both rural communes and rural courts have since been 
subject, and who have the right of inflicting corporal and 
other punishments without judicial trial — depriving 
the peasants of the right of electing representatives to 
the zemstvos, these representatives being now nominated 
by the provincial governor from among candidates pro- 
posed by the peasants, and, finally, making the decisions 
of the zemstvos subject to the governors approval. In 
a word, the rudimentary fabric of local government and 
popular justice set up by Alexander II. was practically 
destroyed, and the one citadel of democracy which the 
Tsardom has never destroyed, the village community, 
was seriously weakened. 

From the day, ten years ago, when he returned with 
a severe reprimand the mild address of the Tver 
Zemstvo praying for the preservation of law and public 
rights, down to the hectoring rescripts of November and 



16 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

March last, the same narrow and inhumane spirit has 
marked the reign of Nicholas II. But throughout this 
decade of persecution and famine, the subterranean forces 
which really govern social history have been working 
fundamental changes. Many things have happened 
since a sunny day soon after his accession when I first 
saw Nicholas Alexandrovich at Copenhagen ; and if he 
had had in him the stuff which some of his relatives and 
most Englishmen were ready to credit him with, that 
impression of ineffable weakness would have been for- 
gotten long ago. Some of us have never entertained 
illusions on this score. Now at last the bubble is 
pricked in sight of the whole world, and it becomes 
evident that this miserable young man has never been 
a progressive force, and that for years past, with brief 
intervals of lucidity, he has been under the thumb of 
charlatans, adventurers, and bigots. The dominant 
personalities of the period are a few men like Plehve, 
Witte, Pobyedonostsev, and it is with these rather than 
the Imperial family that we shall be concerned in the 
following pages. The Tsar, though powerful, is no 
longer Autocrat, is, in fact, little more than the titled 
chairman of an oligarchic board which governs Russia 
as a servile estate. 

Failure in the crises of self-chosen adventure is no 
longer needed to prove the hopelessness of this regime. 
The administrative corruption and incompetence revealed 
in the Crimea, and again in the Turkish war, have received 
a still more lurid exposure at the hands of the Japanese. 
But the real test of government lies in the exigencies of 
everyday life ; and it is because the Tsardom fails here 
even to give the irreducible minimum of security that it 
is how challenged by a voice rising, not merely from a 
few circles of advanced reformers, but from all sections 
of Russian society. Other nations also feel the heavy 



MISE-EN-SCENE 17 

hand of the past upon them, yet they progress, while 
Kussia stagnates ; they enjoy freedom and growing 
wealth, while Russia groans in terror and abject poverty. 
The house of Eomanov exhibits the obstinacy of the 
house of Bourbon, and it is heading straight for the 
same end. 

3. East and West. 

(Nijni Novgorod, July 1896.) 

Following a path very near to that of the early 
Slavs from the Upper to the Middle Volga, I have 
reached the very heart of the country at Nijni 
Novgorod. From the comfortable upper deck of the 
small shallow-draught steamer, we have watched, by 
day and night, the panorama of forests on the one 
bank of the broad stream, and grassy plains meeting 
a far distant horizon on the other, with little factory 
towns springing up here and there along the chain of 
poverty-stricken villages ; while, on the deck below, 
and in the hours of stoppage for goods and passengers, 
we could see the humble toilers of a dozen races at close 
quarters. Beaching the mouth of the Oka after break- 
fast, and going ashore at the Siberian Quay in the 
neighbourhood of the timber and tea warehouses, we 
find ourselves at once, having well chosen the time, in 
the outskirts of the famous Fair, on the threshold of a 
market immensely old, still important to the world, 
and of very peculiar interest to the student of his 
fellows. 

Away from the bustle of the landing-stages, of which 
each shipping company has its own, we look around at 
our ease. For a moment we may be reminded of the 
street side of the cotton warehouses at the Liverpool 
docks : the railway track, with a row of goods waggons, 
probably suggests the likeness. But here the ware- 
houses — low walls supporting immense roofs that run 

c 



18 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

up at an acute angle — have a very different appearance ; 
and lines of proprietorial flagstaffs, one to each shed, 
give a note of playfulness which would not be tolerated 
by the materialistic Britisher. The railway trucks are 
few. Quaint native carts and carriages fill the miry 
road. Processions of carts pass, laden with hides from 
Kazan, cotton from Khiva, wool from Orenburg and 
Siberia, cloths, wine, skin-bound boxes of China tea. 
Shaggy, roughly smocked labourers, the foremen in 
jack-boots and peaked caps, ply their barrows between 
the water-side and the huge stacks of bales, barrels, 
and packages that bound the road on the landward 
side. To walk through this busy chaos becomes tire- 
some, despite the pleasure of clear air and a bright 
sky ; and so, finding the least ramshackle droshky and 
concluding the necessary bargain, I am soon jolting 
slowly over the cobbles through the main streets of 
the Fair to the town. First the Asiatic quarters are 
passed, where Siberians, Persians, a sprinkling even of 
Chinese and Hindus, Bokharans, Caucasians, Tartars, 
Armenians, jostle in motley groups ; and, later, the 
district most affected by Jews, Muscovites, the provincial 
traders, and foreigners. Down street after street of 
low two-storied buildings — windowed shop or open 
shed below a loft for living quarters — rattles the 
cranky carriage. Each street has its distinctive trade 
and racial feature, and, between the varied costumes 
and white-washed facades and the overwhelming sun- 
shine, it is a very gay scene indeed. On the opening 
day of the Fair, a Church procession crosses this quarter 
from the Cathedral to the Makariev Chapel beside the 
Oka, where two flags are then hoisted with much 
superstitious ceremony, and whence, afterwards, a 
wonder-working icon is taken to neighbouring shops 
and living-quarters (one cannot speak of houses here) 



MISE-EN-SCENE 19 

as occasion arises. The great spectacle-day at the Fair 
is July 25, when the feast of its patron saint, Makar, 
is kept. The next fortnight is the busiest time, but 
this tends to be later as the Siberian traders become 
less dependent on river communication, and stand less 
in fear of their way home being blocked by ice. The 
sham pagodas in China row are offices of tea and cloth 
merchants. The Western visitor is interested in the 
icon shops, which do a trade valued at about £15,000 a 
year — just about the same amount as the turn-over of 
the book-shops. That suggests sad reflections, which 
are not lightened when we remember that a large part 
of the books sold are Church publications of the most 
trashy kind. Near the Cathedral Square are the head- 
quarters of the pedlars, who play so important a part 
in Kussian retail trade. Here they get the ornaments, 
icons, prints, and housewife's necessaries that they are 
to sell among the villages far and wide, or barter for 
rags, bristles, and feathers. This, also, is a part of the 
older Kussia which is beginning to give way to the 
more advanced forms of trade. Leaving the old 
curiosity shops to the antiquary, the average man, 
for whom the medley of strange languages and customs 
offers the richest of all curiosity shops, makes for the 
circus, popular garden, and street shows between the 
Mosque and Persian Quarter and the Mestchersky Lake, 
and reminds himself how closely fun and business 
were associated in the olden times. But the Fair is no 
mere playground, for goods valued at over fifteen 
millions of pounds sterling are annually brought to 
it, the chief sales being cotton goods (more than a 
quarter of the whole), un worked iron, copper, and 
other metals, woollen goods, furs, leather goods, and 
raw cotton and wool. 

Picturesque as it all is, revolutionary influences are 



20 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

visibly at work. The visitor is assured that the Fair 
has sadly degenerated since the days when the out- 
landish strangers lived as they might on their native 
prairies for the whole two months of the annual trade 
festival, and when the curfew drums went round at 
nine p.m., lest the over-exuberance of the midnight 
roysterer should lead to the sort of disaster for which 
a wooden town offers so many opportunities. Hotels, 
railways, and the electric light have changed all that ; 
and, while it cannot be said that, as entertainment, the 
infamous singing and dancing of the modern cafe- 
concert are any sort of compensation for the old-world 
manners and customs which they are rapidly killing, we 
discern some substantial compensations for the general 
change. The question is asked whether Nijni is doomed 
as a trade centre. Considering its fine geographical and 
economic situation, the oft-repeated prophecies on this 
point are at least open to doubt. But certainly the 
older Nijni is doomed. Wholesale trade is conducted 
increasingly by means of sample and price-list ; retail 
trade gravitates to the shops of the great towns and 
the smaller fairs. Nijni has suffered from the develop- 
ment of the industrial South and the facilitation of 
local exchange everywhere by the new railway com- 
munications, and has only been saved from rapid decay 
by the growth of trade with the Central Asiatic provinces. 
Middlemen and commercial travellers multiply ; indeed, 
many departments of the Fair are now mere agencies, 
and in the iron and other trades Nijni no longer sets 
the price for the Empire, as of old. There is little 
appearance of an Asiatic bazaar about these broad and 
regular streets. Makariev is but a dim memory. 
There is no dominant monastery to-day — that ancient 
precursor and fosterer of trade and colonization in these 
regions. This alone of all the five hundred fairs which 



MISE-EN-SCENE 21 

survive in the Empire still flourishes, and it only by 
reason of geographical advantages, and because it shows 
some possibility of progress with the times. 

Still, the note of change is not yet as acute as in 
the Western cities ; and Nijni holds some elements of 
the national life which are unrepresented in either 
capital. Turning back along the side of the Oka toward 
the old town, which lies in what, for Russia, is a noble 
situation, on the hills between the south bank of that 
river and the broad expanse of the Volga, we feel 
the old Slavic spirit creeping again into our mind, 
momentarily perturbed by this inroad of Western com- 
mercialism. The broad wooden bridge across the Oka 
offers a good coup oVceuil of this meeting-place of the East 
and the West. How picture the blaze of elementary 
colours ? Impossible task, lacking the brush of a 
Verestchagin, the pen of a Daudet ! Long-haired, long- 
robed popes (sad dogs they seem, for the most part, and 
not at all like our own comfortable papas), Tartar 
labourers, pilgrim-mendicants, sturdy peasant women 
(with scarlet cotton cloths over their heads, and sacks of 
household goods on their shoulders) mingle with devotees 
of Paris fashion and army officers of portentous dignity. 
A row of steamers and hundreds of barges lie upon the 
river, some still stacked with goods ; others, their travels 
ended, ready to be broken up before the ice comes. 
Beyond this little forest of bare masts lie the sands 
(peski), where are the iron and fish wharves. Here and 
there on both banks rise the brick or stone watch-towers 
of the firemen, and, more frequently, the gilded or 
silvered bulbous cupolas of churches and shrines, the 
more important of them surmounted by large chained 
crosses. 

Turning now to the south bank, and climbing up 
the steep hillside on which the old town stands, we 



22 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

leave the Blagovestchensky Monastery on the right, 
and pass under the quaint terraced walls and towers of 
the Kremlin — " as dear to the heart of the Russian/ ' 
says a native writer, " as are the Tower and the Holy 
Gate of Moscow, sanctified as they are by streams of 
human blood, shed for the advancement of Christianity 
and the progress of European civilization." Marked by 
less worthy bloodshed, too, of which the stones of under- 
ground chambers and secret passages could speak loudly 
if stones had tongues. The Spasso-Preobrajensky 
Cathedral and a neighbouring monastery possess 
wonder-working icons, relics, and other possessions 
accounted very valuable ; but the records of the great 
famine of 1891 do not suggest that charity is as im- 
portant a matter with the Russian Church as it was 
with the Master who said, " Sell all thou hast, and give 
to the poor." 

Near here is the Minyin Garden, where the wanderer 
may find a delightful prospect over the two rivers — 
dotted with steamers, boats, and barges — and the green 
prairie stretching far to the horizon. Over there lie, on 
the banks of the river Kerjhentz, colonies of Dissenters. 
On the dim sky-line begins the forest which extends 
with hardly a break to the Arctic Ocean. Resting here, 
one's thoughts go back to the days when Stenka Razin, 
from his ivory chair on the Zhigoulov Hills, directed 
his merry men against the caravans of prince and 
merchant, and yet further back to the days when Mjni 
stood on the blood-stained border, as a stumbling-block 
in the way of the victorious Tartars, and, later, when 
she sent loyal aid to Moscow against insurrection from 
the West. That was the heroic epoch of Volga-land. 
While the Elizabethan adventurers were laying the 
foundations of the British Empire, the opening of 
Siberia brought to the eyes of the notables of the Lower 



MISE-EN-SCENE 23 

New City the vision of a day when the line of the 
Volga, the Caspian, and the Amu Daria would become 
the great trade route to India, with Nijni and Astrakan 
as centres of the trade of the Old World. For a time, 
sober Englishmen also were impressed by the idea. 
But, even had there been no foes to overcome within 
and without, ere the countries along this immense route 
could be settled, and the Russian State could emerge 
in definite form, there was an unforeseen geographical 
factor which changed the whole aspect of events. When 
Peter set up his burg on the marshy end of the Gulf 
of Finland, and thus opened a door to the West, the 
passage of the Cape of Good Hope was well established, 
and England had set her mark upon both India and 
North America. While Russia was trying to get back 
to the heart of the Old Continent, the Western nations 
were pouring out their energy into the New. A 
century of discovery and advance in maritime arts, 
resulting in the establishment of far distant colonies, 
had given a new romantic turn to men's thoughts and 
new material objectives to their endeavours. Russia 
lay far from this movement, in a vast backwater of her 
own, constantly hindered by the need of assimilating 
large alien constituencies, between which and her 
original stock there no longer existed any natural 
barrier. 

The difference between the Slavic and the Anglo- 
Saxon rate of development is the difference between 
the Nijni Novgorod and the Chicago of to-day. Just 
now things are moving with a recklessness as marked as 
the former apathy. Having stood idly by for half a 
century, while every other progressive nation developed 
a more or less rational system of railways, the State has 
been lately engaged in feverishly cutting one line 
through four hundred miles of frozen and unpopulated 



24 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

tundra to Archangel, another over the five thousand miles 
of slightly broken land between the Urals and the 
Pacific, and a network of lesser roads. It is a common 
mistake to suppose that revolution can only be made 
deliberately and from beneath. An autocracy may be 
the most dangerous of revolutionary forces ; it is only 
necessarily conservative when its own interests, or what 
it conceives to be such, are at stake. 

These are not thoughts likely to be welcome to 
my host in the Bolshaya Potrovka, whose official 
duties require his attendance upon the Grand Duke 
Constantine, a visitor to the town to-day. But they 
recur yet more forcibly when we turn back in that 
direction. Our electric tram-car, driven by overhead 
cable, and conducted on the strict Western punch-punch- 
punch-with-care ticket system, dashes through this 
Asia-in-little, leaving the clumsy telega rolling astern, 
and the innocent countryman confirmed in the belief in 
an imminent Judgment Day. The unsparing ray of 
the incandescent lamp falls into the seclusion of the 
wayside shrine, blinding its poor candles, exhibiting, as 
under the white light of the " deadliest " scepticism, 
every wretched object of ignorant piety. So, on smaller 
and larger scales throughout the country, the new and 
the old spirits clash and grapple. We make our way 
to the great " Pan-Russian " exhibition which has been 
set up at the other end of the town. Designed to 
illustrate the immensity of native resources, we find it 
really proves something quite different, — that Muscovite 
obscurantism is no longer based on national aims, 
capacities, and ideals, but on an alien armament directed 
against the people by and for the benefit of a small 
ruling class. The exhibition has cost the Government 
at least a million sterling to set up, and only a million 
visitors, all told, have found their way to it, along the 



MISE-EN-SCENE 25 

crude and uneven track, bounded by a few wooden 
hotel -shanties suggestive of Buluwayo or Okhohama, 
which is the only approach. Those who remember the 
Moscow Exhibition of 1882 say that the evidence of 
industrial advance is general, and is particularly strong 
in the textile and mineral sections. But the period of 
foreign tutelage is far from being ended ; and it is 
shown not alone in the field of manufactures and com- 
merce. 

A yet more important and characteristic sign of 
Western influence is exhibited in the section of the 
Imperial Navy. One would like to have the thoughts 
of the Tolstoyan mujik or the Asiatic drover upon these 
splendid ship-models and machine guns ! Adjoining 
this, curiously enough, is the Education section. Alas ! 
Russia has but few triumphs to boast of here, and 
Western ideas make only the very slightest progress 
against a stony clericalism. The kindergarten appli- 
ances and samples of school work, photographs of schools 
and scholars, model workshops, school museums, etc., 
appeal pathetically to an empty hall which re-echoes 
with the occasional footstep of a solitary priest or a 
belated Englishman. A curious comment on this 
section, as on the whole educational system of the 
Empire, is the otherwise trifling fact that in the 
building of the administration itself (to say nothing 
of private business offices, where it is a common 
necessity), one sees in use the abacus, the counting- 
beads of our far-back forefathers. 

With the Fair at the east end of Nijni, visibly 
portraying the economic development of the peoples of 
the Empire from its earliest to its latest stages, and 
this bastard Exposition in the western suburb, pro- 
claiming the character of a despotism undermined by 
the very forces it has itself called forth, we cannot but 



26 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

feel that official Russia has challenged a fatal comparison, 
has unwittingly shown the workings of a force with 
which it has never reckoned. Modern energy and 
inspiration cannot be restricted to the mercantile and 
industrial sphere. Man is not built in impenetrable 
sections. Every mile of new railway is a new inroad 
upon the Muscovite theory ; wherever it goes the 
steam-horse carries with it the dynamic spirit of Watt 
and Stephenson ; the electric spark means new mental, 
as well as new physical, enlightenment. There is room 
and food in this land of steppes and forests for the 
growth of the new ideas. And they grow. 

4. On the Eve. 

(Warsaw — Moscow, July, 1904.) 

The country seems all asleep under the blazing sun. 
League after league of these prairies and forests, where 
three-quarters of the Tsars subjects labour with axe 
and saw and wooden plough for their precarious bread, 
swings past us ; immense fields of thirsty grain and 
grass, bounded by an interminable dark border of fir 
and birch, and over all the relentless dome of unbroken 
blue. The scene is so vast, so changeless, so devoid of 
human movement, that the tired eye seizes greedily 
upon the least sign of life — a glimpse of peasants in 
coloured skirts and smocks bending at the furrow ; a 
cart just visible over the rippling tops of rye ; a group 
of children driving their little flocks of geese and a few 
gaunt cattle to pasture. 

Here a peaty stream makes an oasis, a meadow gay 
with gentian, buttercups, and heather-bells. There a 
wilderness of charred logs speaks of the scourge of a 
wooded land. A line of dusty highway, with its 
whitened boundary stones that will be looked for 
anxiously on winter nights, breaks the green expanse. 



MISE-EN-SCENE 27 

We pass villages of a dozen dilapidated log-cabins, and, 
more rarely, cross a stream fallen to its lowest ebb in 
the great heat, encumbered with rafts ready for the 
passage to some hopelessly distant sea. 

Nightfall finds us still pursuing our perfectly 
straight track through the dead silence of wood and 
prairie. A reedy pool catches more light than the sky 
seems to give. On the edge of the forest a lamp 
twinkles in a lonely dwelling with a weird brightness ; 
another sparkles against the deep gloom, then another, 
and another, like glow-worms. 

Yes ! in this mute, immeasurable land there are 
living hearts, faithful and hopeful amid the tragedy of 
the times. The demon of War is abroad, ravishing 
these humble homes, leaving women in despair and 
children fatherless. The sister plague, Famine, is al- 
ready brooding over fields parched and robbed of their 
proper labour. It was a red sunset ; may no bloody 
dawn herald the inevitable to-morrow of Eussia's 

manhood ! 

****** 

They keep St. Vladimir's Day in Moscow with a 
procession the like of which, perhaps, no other land 
could show, for the Eoman Church cannot rival the 
splendid pageantry of the Orthodox rite, and the Llamas 
of Tibet are eclipsed by the brazen confidence of this 
appeal to the grossest credulity. Eank after rank of 
priests, stout and bearded, in vestments of velvet and 
cloth of gold, pass, chanting as only the Eussian Church 
knows how. Each group carries its jewelled icons and 
relics on poles or in cases, scores of them ; and at the 
rear a small crowd, mostly of women, is held back by 
a line of police. It is a slow business, for at every 
church or monastery or shrine there must be a stoppage ; 
and I am glad, at last, to get away to my favourite 



28 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

evening niche under the canopy of the Alexander II. 
monument, on the terrace of the Kremlin. 

The air is hot and full of the whistle of swallows, 
the clattering of droshkies in the cobbled streets, the 
boom and tinkle of bells from now one, now another, of 
the hundred towers that rise between us and the distant 
hills. What Asia may hold I know not, but there is 
surely no scene in Europe like this. Just below runs 
the castellated wall of the Kremlin, with its ancient 
turrets of red and green brick ; below that again the 
river, narrow and unromantic, divides the city. Behind 
us, with brilliant effrontery, loom the cradle and citadel 
of the Romanovs — palace, church, and treasury, with 
their ochred walls, green roofs, and gold or blue cupolas 
bearing heavy gilt crosses. Southward, in front of our 
alcove, spread miles of coloured roofs and walls, pointed 
with a few factory chimneys and many more church 
towers, always culminating in gay, bulbous steeples. 
Away to the left the white mass of the Foundling 
Hospital flanks the river ; to the right rises the huge 
pile of the Temple of the Saviour, with its five gold 
crowns against a sky of darkening grey. 

A splendid outlook, if one is content not to see 
below the surface to the squalor of this vast bedraggled 
village that is the heart of the Tsar's domains. A city 
in the Western sense we could not call it, especially 
in these days when broken households and ruined 
businesses tell on every hand the cost of war. Two 
powers there are that do not suffer so — the palace 
behind, the churches that give childish colour to the 
scene in front. Yet let us not be too sure. The city 
seems all asleep under the blazing sun ; but I know 
that, behind shuttered windows, brave hearts are speaking 
of the day when this most unclean pest, Superstition, 
and its fellow Despotism, will be beaten back, and the 



MISE-EN-SCENE 29 

Eussian mind, freed from the chains of centuries, will 
take its own high place in the vanguard of the world's 
progress. Have a care, your Majesty, for in that 
awakening of your people neither Father John, the 
miracle-worker of Cronstadt, nor Monsieur Philippe, 
the Parisian mesmerist, can help you. 



CHAPTER II 

THE OLIGARCHY 

We have seen that a despotic government, originally- 
based upon the needs of national defence and consoli- 
dation, having absorbed or destroyed the classes which 
might have provided a check or balance to its power, 
has degenerated into an engine of exploitation at home 
and conquest on the borderlands, and that it is at last 
challenged, not only by the outraged moral sense of the 
people, but by the newer economic forces whose growth 
it had stimulated for its own immediate purposes. I 
wish now to show, by an examination of the actual 
structure and operations of the State, that this evolution 
has resulted in the destruction of Government and Law 
in the only sense in which those words can be rightly 
applied, and that in modern Kussia the State now 
represents a thinly veiled anarchy, maintained by force 
for the benefit of a degraded official class at the cost of 
the body of the people. 

This is no mere rhetorical expression. I am at least 
as tired as any of my readers of the unceasing stream 
of speculation and scandalous gossip about the Court of 
St. Petersburg. The characters of Nicholas II. and his 
relatives will take in this volume what I believe to be 
their proper place, a very subordinate one, in our con- 
sideration of the Empire they nominally, but only 
nominally, rule. " All the functions of power, the 

30 



THE OLIGARCHY 31 

legislative, the administrative, and the judicial, are 
concentrated in the hands of the sovereign," says M. 
Poutilov ; and Mr. Morfill * says : "all power, legis- 
lative and executive, is settled absolutely in the 
Emperor. " Such is the official theory, unofficially 
decorated by a school of sentimentalists who regard the 
monarch as mystically commissioned and inspired from 
the bosom of his people, as well as from a. higher source. 
Very brief consideration of the facts will show that 
whatever may be the responsibility of the u autocrat " 
his power is not and cannot be real.f 

" In the most insignificant things, as in the greatest," 
says M. Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu in his great work,{ "it 
is the central power which commands, forbids, permits. 
The authorization of the Ministers, the approbation of 
the Council of State, the Emperor's name and signature, 
figure in the pettiest concerns. The Government is 
supposed to be gifted with omniscience and ubiquity ; 
no detail is to escape it. Acts of private charity are 
submitted to it like the rest. From one extremity of 
the Empire to the other not a bursary can be founded in 
a school, not a bed endowed in a hospital, without the 
solemnly registered intervention of the State and the 
Emperor. . . . These diminutive acts of sovereign power 
often figure [in the Official Messenger and the Bulletin 
of Laws] amidst the most important decisions affecting 
the Government, Army, or Navy, producing a most 
singular effect. It is an object-lesson in the doctrine 
that no affairs are lowly enough to be abandoned to the 

* " Russia " (" Story of the Nations " Series), p. 347. 

t The present reigning house recognizes its power as being limited by 
certain traditional rules, the chief of these being that the succession to the 
throne descends by right of primogeniture, with preference to male over 
female heirs, and that the sovereign and his family must be _ members of 
the Orthodox Church. 

% " The Empire of the Tsars and the Russians," vol. ii. p. 60. 



32 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

free judgment of local communities." And he adds : 
" If administrative formalism, implying interminable 
scribbling and red tape, appears to be opposed to the 
notion of a paternal and patriarchal governing power, 
this popular notion itself in a sense virtually contains 
the principle of administrative regulation. This patri- 
archal conception, semi-political, semi-religious, so much 
admired of the Slavophils is, whatever they may say, 
one of the moral causes of the system against which 
they have the good sense to protest." The system 
survives ; the " patriarchal conception " was moribund 
long before the events of January 22, in St. Peters- 
burg. The autocratic theory is, indeed, contradicted by 
the simple fact that no one man could make himself even 
superficially acquainted with more than a small fraction 
of the acts every day committed in the name of the 
Tsar. In the twentieth century, autocracy after the 
manner of Peter the Great is as impossible as the tyrannus 
of ancient Syracuse. The real power lies with a few 
men who control the vast machine without which the 
Tsar has neither information nor means of action. I 
do not propose, therefore, to waste words in reciting 
theories, presupposing a concentration of political power 
in the hands of the monarch, which have long ceased to 
correspond with the facts of Eussian life. The Tsar 
has immense influence and corresponding responsibility. 
A strong Tsar, though he could not give reality to the 
Tsardom, might have carried the nation easily through 
the difficult transition-stage from arbitrary to respon- 
sible and popular rule. Nicholas II. is the weakest 
Emperor Eussia has had for a century, and at the end 
of ten years of his reign the country is more than ever 
subject to a swarm of little despots who carry on a 
bogus business under cover of the old patriarchal sign- 
board. 



THE OLIGARCHY 33 

Where, then, is the seat of real authority in the 
Eussian State ? " All the functions of power are con- 
centrated in the hands of the sovereign ; but," adds the 
official expositor, " the exercise of each of these functions 
is delegated to special organs, whose powers are rigor- 
ously determined by laws, and these laws fix at the 
same time the way the institutions to which the powers 
are confided can use them." This theory of distributed 
autocracy must now be tested by an analysis of the 
bureaucratic system. 

The system, which, as we have seen, was copied 
from Western, especially German, models, formally, but 
only formally, recognizes the idea, essential to Western 
constitutional Governments, of the separation of func- 
tions, especially the independence of the judicature, 
and the subjection of the executive to the legislative 
power. The organ enjoying this right of consultation 
in legislative work is the Council of the Empire, 
which is composed of nominees of the Emperor and 
Ministers. The initiative in legislation is nominally 
retained by the Tsar ; that is to say, it really resides 
in his favourite officers for the time being, and, apart 
from such favour, no legislation can be constitutionally 
initiated. Thus launched, projects are supposed to be 
studied, in the first place, by the Ministry interested ; 
in particular cases by a Special Commission containing 
nominees of industrial, commercial, technical, or other 
interests affected ; and finally by the Council of the 
Empire, in departmental committee and then in general 
assembly. After this, they are presented to the Emperor, 
together with the opinions of the majority and the 
minority in the Council ; and at this point his favourite 
officer for the time being again exerts a determining 
influence. The decision arrived at becomes the law.* 

* " The Council of State was meant to take the place of a parliament, to 

D 



34 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

Not only may the Emperor ignore the opinions of the 
Council, however ; he may, and does, ignore its existence 
altogether, proceeding to legislate directly or refuse 
legislation on the suggestion of some personal favourite. 
In addition to this leading department of the Council, 
there are departments of Administration and Finance, 
concerned mainly with the consideration of the Budget 
and expenditure, and measures of urgency, including 
the making of war and peace. 

" In the legislative and administrative domains," 
says M. Poutilov,* " the Emperor decides matters in 
an immediate and direct way. It is otherwise in the 
domain of judiciary power. The judiciary reform of 
Alexander II. had as its basis a rigorous separation of 
the judiciary power; there was created an autonomous 
and independent justice. The Emperor is regarded 
as its head, but he does not take part in judicial 
decisions. In this sphere he has only the surveillance 
of the regular administration of justice, and this he 

represent autocratic power in its legislating capacity, and at the same time 
to exercise control over the Ministers' administration. Of these two missions 
it has really fulfilled neither. It is in great part composed of high function- 
aries, some in office, some retired, the former absorbed by their duties, the 
latter frequently incapable, from age or infirmity, to seriously share in the 
Council's labours. Side by side with numerous aides-de-camp, who know 
nothing about State business, are former civil officers, desirous of re-entering 
acting service, and more anxious to conciliate the Ministers' favour than to 
watch their actions. . . . Accordingly, when any really important measure 
is on hand, the sovereign usually has recourse to special commissions . . , 
many of which, after starting with a great nourish of trumpets, vanish silently 
away, without having produced anything but voluminous minutes and reports. 
The system produces a twofold inconvenience : a dilatoriness calculated to 
drive to despair, and the loss of all the advantages of a uniform and homo- 
geneous legislation. Hence Kussian law betrays a certain fragmentariness, in- 
coherence, and inconsistency " (Leroy-Beaulieu, ii. pp. 72-3). The Shidlovsky 
Commission appointed to inquire into industrial conditions after the January 
disturbances in St. Petersburg, and dismissed a month later by Imperial order, 
is a fair example of the expedient here referred to. 
* Op. cit., p. 81. 



THE OLIGARCHY 35 

realizes through the Directing Senate." Once supervis- 
ing the whole administration, the Senate's powers in 
this respect have been reduced by the growing power of 
the Ministries and the Council of the Empire, and it is 
now chiefly important as the Supreme Court of Judi- 
cature, being divided into nine sections, of which two 
are Courts of Cassation, and two give judgment in 
political cases and on charges against officials. It can 
still make remonstrances to the Emperor in regard to the 
general administration, but this function is practically 
unexercised. Its members are generally men of rank 
and substance. 

At the head, nominally, of the civil administration 
stand two bodies, one of which — the Council of Ministers 
— makes but a spectral and spasmodic appearance. It 
consists of all the Ministers, the Secretary of State 
(that is, the Secretary of the Council of the Empire), 
and any other persons whom the Tsar likes to call to 
his aid. Its hypothetical business is to harmonize 
when necessary the measures of the separate Ministries. 
It was intended by its author, Alexander II. , in his 
brief reform period, to be the supreme administrative 
board of the country ; it is now only occasionally called 
together, and has been practically superseded by the 
Committee of Ministers, a larger body with wider but 
undefined powers. This consists of a president named 
by the Emperor (M. de Witte was placed in this chair 
when M. de Plehve secured his dismissal from the more 
important post of Finance Minister), the presidents of 
departments of the Council of the Empire, Ministers, 
and persons nominated by the Emperor. All business 
common to or superior to the separate Ministries is 
supposed to come before this Committee, as well as 
important administrative questions, such as those of 
the higher police, the censorship, and famine relief. 



36 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

It may also have a consultative voice in legislation. 
Its decisions in all but routine affairs are submitted to 
the Emperor — that is, they are decided by his most 
powerful advisers for the time being. Beside this 
paramount body and various occasional councils, there 
are three permanent councils — those of Finance, War, 
and the Navy ; and special councils for specific current 
purposes are formed from time to time, such as the 
Committees on the Caucasus, the affairs of Poland, and 
the Siberian Railway. 

Nominally executive organs of this higher adminis- 
tration, the Ministries, or at least the chief of them, are 
the real seats of authority in the State, because they 
are directly in touch with the people in matters of 
crucial importance, because they have immediately 
behind them the great rank and file of the bureaucracy, 
with its hitherto invincible traditions and esprit de 
corps, and because these are the natural strongholds of 
the most ambitious and experienced members of the 
whole hierarchy. M. Witte, at the head of the Finance 
Ministry — with its sections and consultative committees 
of commercial, fiscal, and other experts, and its control 
over taxation and expenditure, the liquor monopoly, 
the protective tariff, the railways, factories, mines, and 
industry in general — was to a very large extent master 
of the State machine, until M. Plehve, his great rival of 
the Ministry of the Interior, found it necessary to 
grapple with him ; and, after twenty years of successful 
reaction, Plehve — master of the police and gendarmerie, 
the censorship, the institutions of the nobility, the 
provincial governors, and the zemstvos — was only re- 
moved by the bomb of Sozonov. By these two Minis- 
tries, whenever they have powerful chiefs, together 
with the Over-Procurator of the Holy Synod, the internal 
affairs of the Empire are practically governed. This 



THE OLIGARCHY 37 

summary description of their two spheres suggests at 
once a distinction of the spirit likely to inspire each of 
them ; but under the oligarchic regime, though the 
experts in coercion and persecution may, from time to 
time, come into collision with the experts in exploitation 
and monopoly, they are equally anti-social. Some 
individuals w T ill prefer the pressure of police tyranny 
to be relieved, others the pressure of taxation to be 
lightened ; the nation, as a whole, has nothing to gain 
by the success of either party. 

The other Ministries are those of Foreign Affairs, 
War, Marine, Justice, Agriculture and State Domains, 
Ways and Communications, Public Instruction, the 
Imperial Household, and the State Control. All these 
Ministers communicate directly with the Monarch. 

Finally, there is the central administration of the 
Church, the Holy Synod, consisting of leading ecclesias- 
tics and long personified to the outer world by its 
Procurator-General, M. Pobyedonostsev, who is at once 
the mouthpiece of the Tsar to the Church and of the 
.Church to the Tsar, a position of unique influence. 
The Tsar is the head of the Church, with its 80,000 
married and unmarried clergy, as of the State, and the 
Synod has powers in religious matters very similar to 
those of the Senate in secular affairs, combining " legis- 
lative," administrative, and judicial functions in the 
same way. Through its State-protected network of 
village schools any substantial advance of elementary 
education in the Empire is effectually stopped. 

Such is the central machine. As to the Monarchy 
and the Church, it is peculiarly the product of Kussian 
history ; for the rest, it is borrowed from the West, it 
has essentially the same problems to face as in the 
West, and therefore it may fairly be judged by Western 
standards. So regarded, the first and most important 



38 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

criticism will be directed not to the details of its 
structure, but to its complete lack of what, in every 
other civilized nation of the world, is regarded as the 
essential basis of government. In local affairs there are 
two important centres of popular power ; in the central 
government there is no representation of the people, no 
tie with the people except that which binds master and 
subject. If, in smaller or more homogeneous States, a 
public assembly, reflecting the various classes of the 
population, is considered necessary to contribute the 
experience and the concern for the general welfare 
requisite to wise legislation, how much more so must 
this be in an Empire containing such diversity of racial, 
intellectual, and economic conditions. Ten years ago, 
the nation would have been satisfied with a very small 
modicum of influence in the State ; the absolute refusal 
of that modest demand, instead of extinguishing, has 
aggravated and broadened it until nothing but a radical 
reform of the whole system will now serve. Even 
without any kind of representation at St. Petersburg, 
the dangerous pressure of discontent would have been 
relieved had a reasonable liberty of the press and of 
public meeting been conceded. And even without 
representation and public liberty, the old regime might 
have long continued, had it not, by its barbarous denial 
of personal rights in every particular, proved its veri- 
tably piratical character. The captain of an Atlantic 
liner, while at sea, is a type of the only possible 
benevolent autocrat — one whose autocracy is limited 
by his responsibility to higher authorities under whose 
immediate control he comes from time to time. The 
old-time pirate is a type of the Russian oligarchy, in 
that he had shaken off all responsibility save to his own 
crew ; the only laws he recognized were those he made 
himself for his own ends. Any so-called government 



THE OLIGARCHY 39 

which maintains itself above Law, in the larger sense 
implied in the French term droit, and acknowledges 
no responsibility, is merely a junta of outlaws depending 
on armed force. It may plead a momentary j ustification, 
like that of Robin Hood ; but its excuses cease to have 
any validity directly its subjects, or a portion of them 
strong enough to provide a substitute government, 
arrive at a consciousness of its real character and declare 
for a better rule. The " laws " have none of the quality 
and sanction of Law when they have not at least a 
minimum of regularity and impartiality of application. 
From time to time there is evidence that the oligarchy 
itself, and not the people only, is driven to distraction by 
the play of incalculable currents of secret influence. So 
it was at Christmas last, when two contradictory decrees 
bearing the Tsar's signature appeared in quick succession; 
and again on the eve of Emancipation Day, when the 
Ministers going down to Tsarskoye Selo for the Emperor's 
signature to a manifesto promising some sort of repre- 
seDtative assembly found on opening the Official Messenger 
that they had been forestalled by a decree declaring for 
the maintenance of the old machine, the continuance of 
the war, and the due punishment of agitators. 

In Russia, in short, arbitrariness is the sole depend- 
able characteristic of the legislative and judicial systems; 
and this arises not so much from a double dose of 
original sin in the personnel of the administration as 
from the absence of any real responsibility, and of any of 
the guarantees enjoyed in other countries, firstly, through 
a Constitution based upon personal rights, secondly, 
through a representative element in the legislature, 
and thirdly, through free criticism by the press, public 
meeting, and organized associations. Neither responsi- 
bility nor guarantees, personal or public, exist under 
the Tsardom ; and it is, therefore, not at all surprising 



40 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

that the pretence of paternalism is contradicted by a 
flagrant lack of honesty and justice from top to bottom 
of the governing body, as clearly as the pretence of 
being a government of experts is contradicted by its 
abounding inefficiency. Nor is it surprising, therefore, 
to find that hatred of the bureaucracy is a sentiment 
uniting the most various classes of the people ; that, of 
all nations at the present day, the Russians outside the 
official class are the least " patriotic," in the conventional 
sense, and the least political ; and that, at last, the 
cloud of revolution has burst over town and steppe and 
forest. 

Of the central government it only need be added 
here that this unwieldy body, with its atrophied organs 
and well-nigh hopeless confusion of functions, lends 
itself excellently to the purposes of place-hunters and 
" boodlers " in general, and the few strong men who 
compete for the monarch's prime favour in particular. 
In a scientific sense there cannot be said to be a legis- 
lative organ — a sole determinate body recognized as 
exercising this function — since, the various Councils 
apart, individual Ministers and favourites of the 
Monarch, as well as the Tsar himself, constantly issue 
decrees which, in any other civilized country, would 
require legislative sanction. It is of the essence of 
modern government that the executive should be sub- 
ject to the legislative and money-granting power, and 
that the judicature should be independent of both. 
But the money-granting and executive powers are here 
frequently in the same hands ; and the judicature is 
absolutely under bureaucratic control — for instance, the 
practice of punishment by "administrative order," 
introduced as a temporary measure in 1871, has long 
become habitual — and so can neither give security to 
private citizens nor bring the check of law to bear upon 



THE OLIGARCHY 41 

the operations of the Government. Between the various 
Ministers there is no effective bond ; they are frequently 
enemies or rivals for the highest favour, and factions 
and feuds among them lead to irregularity and con- 
fusion in executive business, which are reflected among 
the subordinate staff. These scandals serve, indeed, a 
useful purpose, and it has been said that greater ad- 
ministrative unity should only be desired if joined to 
new guarantees of personal and public liberty. Viewed 
as a whole, however, it is evident that such a system 
would lead to great evils even in a small primitive State 
based on the individualist principle ; in a large modern 
State, where interference and tutelage are universal,* 
and where the newer forms of capitalism are springing 
up as in a virgin soil, the results are of an infinitely 
more serious character. A man like Plehve, gifted, 
experienced, unscrupulous, and resolute, forces his way 
to the top, or may even come suddenly to the top by 
winning the Tsar's ear. He then finds himself at the 
head of a vast and highly drilled army, ready for any 
feat of coercion and exploitation. There is no legisla- 
ture — either hereditary or elective — to bother about; if 
the judges are not complaisant, they can easily be set 
aside ; if the press dares to say a word, it can be silenced 
under pretence of guarding public order and the majesty 
of the State. Abdul Hamid is a bungling rustic in 
crime as compared with the head of the Eussian police 
army. Or, again, a man like M. Witte, as ambitious 

* " Since Peter the Great, the Government has systematically applied 
itself to suppress any spontaneous impulse in the country, to reduce it to the 
condition of an automaton, of a docile mechanism, set in motion by the one 
mainspring wielded by the Government. The entire administration was 
cast in a military mould ; discipline, orders — such has been the law of the 
civilian's, as of the soldier's, life, and this law has been extended to all the 
details of existence with unexampled minuteness and indiscretion " (Leroy- 
Beaulieu, ii. 67). 



42 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

and, in a broader way, as unscrupulous, wins his way 
to the top in an economic crisis, and enters upon a 
career of financial adventure on a scale of unprecedented 
magnitude. He creates the largest drink monopoly and 
the largest and least remunerative State railway pro- 
perty in the world, and piles up a huge national debt. 
The people who pay for these luxuries have not even the 
power of open criticism ; and, when they at length break 
into revolt, it is this same M. Witte who offers himself 
as their (still quite irresponsible) saviour. A system 
which gives these oligarchs their opportunity needs, not 
peddling modification, but root-and-branch reform. 

This conclusion is reinforced when to the faults of 
the central machine we add those of the provincial 
administration. In progressive lands, local government 
means, in the main, local self-government. In Russia, 
this is the field of the worst tyranny and the most 
disastrous obscurantism ; and things have gone back- 
ward, not forward, during the last two reigns. One 
might suppose that diversity of race, culture, and lan- 
guage, in a territory affording abundant room for all, 
would favour a devolution of political power and the 
encouragement of self-government in the more advanced 
districts. The tendency has been quite the reverse of 
this. The people of Kiev and Odessa, the factory- 
workers of Poland, the farmers of Finland, are dragooned 
no less than the rough natives of the Caucasus and the 
aborigines of Siberia. 

I resort again to my official commentator. " Local 
administration in Russia," says M. Poutilov,* " affords 
a very varied and bizarre picture, and this diversity is 
further increased by the complexity of the administra- 
tive organization, the result of a slow and laborious 
historical travail, which has broken the general harmony 

* Pp. 85, 86. 



THE OLIGARCHY 43 

of the structure by successive additions. To maintain 
the tie binding the different parts of the Empire, very 
great prudence is necessary, and many difficulties have 
had to be overcome. Different systems have had to be 
applied according to place and time. Nevertheless, the 
base of the whole Eussian administrative system is the 
principle of centralization. * This principle had its roots 
in Muscovite Eussia, and was expressed in the reforms 
of the period of Peter I., who, in its general features, 
created the present organization of the country into 
governments or provinces. On this base, the Empress 
Catherine II. raised a different style of edifice, the 
characteristic of her reforms being decentralization and 
the administrative autonomy of different classes of the 
people. This system was again radically changed by 
Paul I., and still more considerably by the organization 
of Ministries, on the principle of the most rigorous 
centralization. The creation of Ministries resulted in 
the establishment, all over the land, of organs special to 
each Ministry, and almost independent of the provincial 
administration ; they had no vital connection with the 
old organization, and developed independently. Finally, 
an entirely new group of bodies, the municipal and 
provincial institutions created by Alexander II. and 
based on the principle of self-government in the 
economic domain, was set up alongside the ancient 
bureaucratic machinery. These successive creations or 
stratifications have resulted in making the existing 
administration very complicated, but it is none the less 
rigorously constituted. Its simplification, with a view 

* Leroy-Beaulieu (ii. 65) admits, though he does not accept the con- 
tention, that " Russian writers — some of them democrats like Herzen, others 
Slavophils like the two Aksakovs, and especially Little Russians like the 
historian Kostomarov — have contended that centralization was contrary to 
the Slavic genius, which they represent as naturally inclining toward 
federalism." 



44 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

to harmonizing and unifying its parts, is one of the 
tasks that the Russian Government will have to carry- 
out in the very near future." The tasks that even its 
own scribes regard as pressing would keep the oligarchy 
busy for a long time to come ! 

For administrative purposes, the Empire (save the 
convict island of Sakhalin) is quite artificially divided 
into seventy-eight governments, subdivided into dis- 
tricts, and eighteen provinces or regions. At the head 
of each of these stands a Governor, who enjoys a double 
authority: he represents the central State in general, 
by promulgating laws, taking decisions having the force 
of law in matters of public order, security, decency, 
and exercising surveillance over all administrative and 
representative bodies of the province ; and he is the 
agent of the Ministry of the Interior in particular, and, 
as such, chief of the police of the province, and inter- 
mediary in matters of public security, public health, 
economic interests, and charity. Though there are 
special agents of other Ministries, and central officers 
enjoying practical independence in the province — in- 
spectors of mines, factories, agriculture, railways, 
schools, customs and excise officers, managers of the 
drink monopoly and the State banks, to say nothing 
of the hierarchy of the Church — the Governor holds a 
powerful position. He is often a soldier, and then, 
knowing and caring little of civil affairs, falls easily into 
the tyrannical use of his police authority. If he does 
not become an utter tyrant, it is mainly because he has 
a still more despotic superior watching and using him 
from the capital. He is aided, in addition to various 
committees of petty officials, by a Council or Regency, 
which in the scheme of Catherine II. (1775) was intended 
to be the real seat of local power, but has long lost 
its independence, and is now little more than a Police 



THE OLIGARCHY 45 

Board. The districts, of which from eight to fifteen are 
united in a province, are practically ruled, not by civil 
or judicial officers, but by police captains (ispravnik), 
nominated by the Governor, and having under their 
orders in the more important localities commissaries 
(stanovoy pristav), who have under them the rank and 
file of mounted and unmounted police. The largest 
towns only have a special urban police. Four towns — 
St. Petersburg, Odessa, Sevastopol, and Kertch — are 
constituted prefectures directly under the central 
government. Moscow has a Governor-General, in virtue 
of being the old capital. 

Of self-governing institutions in towns, of the 
zemstvos and their subjection to the provincial 
governors and the marshals of nobility, and of that 
primitive unit of economic life, the mir, I speak else- 
where. Zemstvos exist, however, only in thirty-four 
provinces of European Eussia. In the rest of the 
Empire the numerous administrative bodies belonging 
to the pre-" reform " era are under the direction of 
.their chiefs, along with the marshal of nobility of the 
province and the mayor of the town, deliberating under 
the presidency of the Governor. In Poland there is 
self-government in the rural parishes (gmines), under 
the strict supervision of district chiefs of police ; but 
the towns are administered by magistrates appointed 
by the State, and have no self-government. The 
Cossack territories have a purely military adminis- 
tration directly under the Ministry of War. In 
nine frontier provinces — Finland, Poland, the South- 
West and North- West territories, the Caucasus, the 
province of Irkutsk, and that of the Amour Valley, 
Turkestan, and the Central Asian steppes — there are 
more permanent general administrations, with much 
wider powers, under Governors-General who usually 



46 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

combine civil and military authority. Here there is 
no pretence whatever of hiding the " mailed fist." 

From this brief sketch of the army of the oligarchy, 
some features emerge in clear relief. We recall the story 
of the greater Nicholas ruling on a map the straight 
line from St. Petersburg to Moscow which the first 
railway was to pursue ; and we recall, also, how much 
Russia might have gained in escaping the inheritance 
of feudalism as we know it in the West. Autocracy, 
hard and unquestioned, might be expected to result in 
a simple, if rigid, governmental machinery. On the 
contrary, it has given Russia an official structure in- 
describably complicated, and an immense bureaucracy 
which, by common consent, is as venal as it is ignorant 
and capricious. Autocratic " reforms " from the days of 
Catherine II. to those of Alexander II. have served 
only to make confusion worse confounded, leaving an 
encumbrance of institutions that died within a few 
years because the people were never called to support 
them, and the oligarchs saw in them a threat against 
their own monopoly of power. When these men 
found the new bodies to their purpose, however, as 
in the constitution of Ministries, or again in the 
transfer of the gendarmerie to the Home Office, they 
flourished exceedingly, after the bureaucratic fashion. 
With the exception of the serfdom in its more cruel 
phases, Russian despotism is probably more generally 
and intolerably oppressive at the present moment than 
it has ever been in its long history. 



CHAPTER III 

THE LAND WITHOUT LAW 

There are thousands of laws in Kussia, but there is no 
law : this is the gravest of the many grave features of 
the oligarchic regime. With no fundamental individual 
rights, no independent judicature, and no organ that can 
be properly called a legislature, the country is cursed with 
over-legislation of the most freakish and mischievous 
kind. The " cognoscibility " and definiteness of legal 
duties which Western jurists regard as so important 
are completely wanting, with the result of universal 
insecurity, and perpetual inconsistency and inequality 
in the utterances of the " paternal " will. These evils 
are inherent in the auto-bureaucratic idea — they would 
exist if the Tsar and his servant-masters were angels ; 
hence, there is no hope in any reform which is not 
fundamental and sweeping. 

Alexander II. tried to reconcile the irreconcilable, 
and the official expositors of the judicial system claim 
that he succeeded. "The courts hitherto," says M. 
Poutilov, " were insufficient in various respects ; they 
had no independence ; their procedure was secret and 
rigorously formal ; the judges were ill-instructed, trials 
dragged on indefinitely, the most shameful venality 
reigned." Some of these scandals have, indeed, been 
modified ; but " the complete separation of the judicial 
from the legislative and executive powers and the 

47 



48 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

entire independence of the courts " of which this 
writer speaks do not exist in fact. Poland and other 
large parts of the country have never had jury trials ; 
martial law is constantly invoked ; and in the two later 
reigns "publicity of trial, simplification of procedure, 
and the institution of the jury as a court of the public 
conscience in the gravest crimes and tribunals of peace 
in less important affairs " — the basic reforms of the 
new system — have been fatally weakened. From the 
beginning, trial by jury was limited to common-law 
crimes, political cases being referred to special tribunals. 
The preliminary work of investigation and indictment, 
which in England depends on the Grand Jury, was left 
to officials who never had any real independence, and 
against whom the subject had no redress. Preliminary 
investigation might drag on for a year or two, the 
supposed offender, often arrested on the merest suspicion, 
being kept in prison the while. Gradually, judges 
became more and more dependent on ministerial favour,* 
and in 1886 an Imperial ukase, repealing their fixity 
of tenure, swept away the last vestige of judicial 
independence. At the same time, the public prosecutor 
and police witnesses gradually obtained more and more 
power at the expense of the advocate for the defence, 

* The highest tribunal of all is not free from the grosser kinds of 
favouritism. In April, 1894, the First Department of the Senate gave its 
decision in the case of one P. V. Nekludov, Governor of the province of 
Orel. He was charged with having unlawfully flogged a number of peasant s 
who had declined to comply with certain police orders, and several women 
and old men had died from the effects of the punishment. The Department 
found that the action of Nekludov contained the essential features of a crime ; 
but, taking into consideration that his indictment would require a preliminary 
inquiry, during which peasant witnesses would be examined, which was not 
desirable, and that the Minister of the Interior had taken no steps to indict 
Nekludov, he was simply reprimanded. As, however, this resolution was 
not strictly legal, it was necessary that, before its enactment, the Minister of 
Justice should obtain the sanction of his Imperial Majesty. To the Minister's 
report the Tsar answered, " I am very glad." 



THE LAND WITHOUT LAW 49 

and the status of the bar has been progressively lowered. 
Little by little the Inquisition has won back what it 
had lost in the field touched by the reforms of 1864. 

To say that the system is now marked by " sim- 
plicity and symmetry," that it combines French and 
English features, and that under it " personal liberty 
and property are guaranteed as certainly as in other 
civilized countries," is, therefore, an impudent mis- 
representation of the facts. The comparison between 
the zemski natchalniki and English Justices of the 
Peace is absurd, since the essence of the Eussian office 
is the command over rural local government ; and, in 
fact, Mr. Poutilov admits " a most grave and most 
essential modification of the organization '' by the 
establishment of military and other special tribunals, 
by the partial suppression of juries, and by the substi- 
tution, both in town and country, of nominated bureau- 
crats for elective justices under the law of June, 1899, 
so that " at the present time the beauty and harmony 
of the great edifice of 1864 are broken in many parts/' 

The first article of the Russian Code still vitiates 
the rest of the contents of its sixteen immense volumes : 
" The Emperor of all the Russias is an Autocratic and 
Unlimited Monarch. Obedience to the sovereign 
power of the Emperor is commanded by God Himself, 
not only by fear but in conscience/' But the unlimited 
power of the Tsar is and can be no other than the 
unlimited power of the official class by which he lives, 
and through which alone he can learn and act, the very 
class which, unaided, unrestricted, makes or sets aside 
these laws. How is the subject to know the terms and 
bearing of the laws in a land where free education and 
discussion are forbidden ? They are to be promulgated 
by the Senate, " except such orders as are to be kept 
secret" (footnote to Article 50). But secret laws are 

E 



50 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

the very negation of law. Article 44 provides that 
" complete freedom of religion is granted to all Russian 
subjects," and the following article specifies that this 
right is shared not only by non-Orthodox Christians, 
but by Jews, Mahommedans, and others, " so that all 
the races inhabiting Russia may glorify God Almighty 
each in its own language according to the faith and 
rites of their ancestors." But again it is provided in a 
footnote that " rules defining religious toleration and 
its limits are fully contained in special statutes," and it 
is only by reference to these special and unpublished 
" statutes " that the persecution of the Jews, Dukhobors, 
and others could be judicially defended. The press 
laws fill a large volume, but that is not enough, and so 
they are supplemented by hundreds of secret circulars 
directing or prohibiting the pettiest details of journalistic 
activity. All such minor instances of extra-legal law- 
making sink into insignificance, however, beside the 
wholesale breach of civil order involved in the system 
of exile and imprisonment by "administrative order" 
and the application of the martial-law statute by 
which, at any moment, the extremest powers can be 
placed in the hands of the Governors-General and 
Provincial Governors. 

With such opportunities and traditions, it would be 
absurd to look to the administration to display a legal 
spirit in its daily work. In fact, lawlessness marks that 
work from top to bottom. One might suppose that, in 
the rare cases in which it dares openly to invoke the aid of 
the courts of another country, the Russian Government 
would be scrupulously careful in the conduct of its case ; 
but the famous Konigsberg trial of July, 1904, in which 
nine German Socialist workmen or clerks were charged, 
on the initiative of the Russian Embassy, with treason 
against the Russian Government by smuggling forbidden 



THE LAND WITHOUT LAW 51 

publications over the frontier, shows how difficult it is 
to throw off the habit of dishonesty contracted under 
arbitrary rule. I quote at length some of the evidence 
given on this occasion, not because it is new or of ex- 
ceptional value, but because it was given in face of the 
representatives of official Russia, on the stage they had 
themselves chosen, and with the best opportunity of 
correcting misstatements if any were made. The 
corrections were of another kind. The Russian Consul 
was forced in examination to confess that he had 
mutilated some passages of evidence and manufactured 
others ; and the Russian Embassy at Berlin was proved 
to have suppressed material passages of the Russian law 
in translating it for the Court. 

A very striking episode in the trial was the evidence 
of a Russian professor of civil and criminal law, Dr. von 
Reussner, who had resigned his Chair in the University 
of Tomsk after being censured for protesting against 
the maltreatment of his students by the soldiery. 
Having quoted the saying of another Russian legal 
expert — " above there rules an official lie, below un- 
bounded and wanton caprice " — Dr. Reussner said 
that even the lower officials and policemen have the 
power of satraps over the population. While the Tsar 
continues in theory to be omnipotent and absolute, it is 
evident that in practice the Imperial power tends 
to fall into the hands of the bureaucracy. In their 
turn the ordinary officials have no legal protection 
against their superiors, exactly as the people have no 
legal protection against them. By the ill-famed third 
clause of Article 783, any official can be dismissed or 
punished by his superiors on suspicion alone ; but, on 
the other hand, officials cannot be made liable to legal 
penalties without the express authorization of their 
immediate superiors. 



52 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

'•'Freedom of speech is at a considerable discount in other 
countries as well, but in Eussia there are also incalculable and 
unsuspected restrictions upon freedom of thought. In the 
sphere of religious belief, for example, secession from the 
Orthodox Church to other sects is punishable with exile to 
Siberia and loss of civil rights, while the adoption even of 
creeds which are not prohibited in Eussia is only possible with 
the sanction of the Minister of the Interior. In any case, for 
a person to 'dissent' from the established Greek faith is to 
incur the loss of all civil rights, including the jus parentis* 
while a number of administrative restraints are superimposed 
in addition. Moreover, the ecclesiastical authorities possess 
powers of then own which are independent of the State and of 
the police. The Consistory Courts are able to condemn even 
suspected ' dissenters ' to a lifelong imprisonment in a prison or 
in a monastery, or to exile them to Siberia. In the matter of 
political and religious freedom the Jews are, of course, at a 
notorious disadvantage. They are not allowed to live near the 
frontier, nor in particular towns nor in specified quarters of 
certain towns, nor are they permitted to engage in certain 
trades. Neither are they accorded a free entry to the educa- 
tional establishments of the State. 

"Another subject touched by Professor Eeussner was the 
condition of the Eussian Press. There is no liberty of the 
Press, : he said. The Minis ter of Education, the Minister of 
the Interior, the Minister of Justice, and the Procurator of the 
Holy Synod, the notorious M. Pobyedonostsev, can suppress or 
suspend any newspaper at any time, and there is no law com- 
pelling them to state the reasons which have led them to this 
action. The newspaper proprietor or editor is met at every 
point by a swarm of censors. They can punish their victim 
in a variety of ways. They can forbid the insertion of adver- 
tisements for a period ; they can prohibit the public sale of 
an obnoxious journal ; they can exclude it from the railway 

* The practice of robbing dissenting parents of their children so that the 
latter should be brought up in the Orthodox faith, a comparatively recent 
invention of the Piussian Government, was exposed by Count Tolstoy in a 
letter which was allowed to appear in the St. Petersburg Yyedomosti about 
seven years ago. Other details will be found in Free Eussia of February, 
1898. 



THE LAND WITHOUT LAW 53 

book-stalls ; they can entirely suspend its publication until the 
offending editor comes to heel. 

" ' What about the right of free meeting ? ' asked counsel. 
The reply was that this was a matter for the police. They can 
prohibit any meeting to which they object, and there is no one 
to question their action, no authority to which to appeal — in 
fact, any appeal against police measures brings the appellant 
into serious trouble. A scientific association cannot convene a 
meeting without first notifying the police ; students cannot 
gather for convivial purposes without the presence of a police- 
man to watch the proceedings ; workmen must not meet at all 
in numbers to discuss their grievances." 

" Strikes are in all circumstances forbidden. Elementary 
education in Eussia is at a deplorable level, and yet whoever 
teaches children or causes them to be taught reading or writing 
withoub official permission is liable to heavy penalties, because 
the authorities are afraid that the knowledge thus acquired 
may be put to an unlawful use." 

" As regards the course of justice, it not infrequently occurs 
that regular decisions of the Law Courts are set aside by secret 
rescripts, and that sentences passed by responsible judges are 
altered to other sentences, passed by Provincial Governors, and 
carried out by Administrative Order. ' But the judges,' asked 
counsel, ' are they not irremovable ? ' ' Yes,' answered Professor 
Reussner, ' but this is only in theory. The difficulty is met by 
the appointment of vice- judges, who are removable at the dis- 
cretion of the Minister of Justice,' and whose object is, therefore, 
to act in a way which will secure the Minister's favour. ' Do 
you know of cases,' asked Herr Liebknecht, ' of beating and of 
flogging to death in the prisons of political prisoners, male and 
female ? ' ' It is common knowledge,' answered the witness, 
1 that political prisoners often break out into " hunger-strikes " 
against the practice of flogging.' 'Is there in Eussia,' asked 
Herr Liebknecht, ' any legal way of demanding reforms — even 
the smallest?' 'No/ answered the Professor. 'Throughout 
Eussia there is practically no right of petition, and there is 
consequently no means of effecting, or even of recommending, 
reforms without contravening the law. The parish and district 
councils are only permitted to occupy themselves with local 
affairs, and they are not allowed to address petitions to the 



54 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

Tsar. The nobles, on the other hand, do enjoy this privilege, 
but they, too, are not permitted to raise or discuss questions of 
general interest. 

" ' In conclusion,' deposed Professor Eeussner, ' I must add 
that nearly the whole of Eussia has been for more than a 
decade under military law. Therefore the Minister of the 
Interior and the Governors-General have the power to court- 
martial any civilian they may wish. Flogging, even of crowds 
on a large scale, is common, and was resorted to notably at 
Kharkov during the risings of 1902. At the time, the action 
of the authorities was regarded as an arbitrary and wanton 
measure, but it has since transpired that it rested upon a secret 
ordinance of the Emperor Alexander III.' " * 

The evidence of another witness, a German who 
spoke from Russian experience, Herr Buchholtz, con- 
tained the following story of a notorious official, General 
von Wahl, of which there is confirmation from other 
sources, f When he was Governor of Yilna in 1902, 
there were some insignificant May-day demonstrations 
by the workmen. In the evening, papers were thrown 
from the gallery of the theatre into the pit, bearing the 
words, " Congratulations on May 1 — the workmen's 
holiday. Down with Autocracy ! " Shouts were raised 
throughout the theatre of " Down with Absolutism ! " 
Numerous arrests of workmen were made, and they were 
carried off to gaol. Next morning Von Wahl, who was 
already very unpopular by reason of his coercive measures, 
including the closing of several Catholic Churches in 
Lithuania, appeared and ordered the imprisoned work- 
men to be brought before him. "I have got something 
specially for you all," he said. All the prisoners were 
ordered to be stripped naked, including those who were 
accidentally in the crowd when the arrests were made, 

* I am indebted to the Times and Daily Telegraph reports for the pre- 
ceding quotations. 

f See Free Russia (June, 1902) for further details of this episode. 







O o 1 
ft o 





^ 


PS 


*<» 




~ 


H 


s 


ft 


< 


<1 


"S 



THE LAND WITHOUT LAW 55 

and each received thirty lashes. After the first ten 
strokes some fainted, and the whipping was suspended 
until they recovered. When it was all over Von Wahl 
again addressed his victims with the sneer, " Congratu- 
lations on May 1." On May 18, Von Wahl was shot 
at by a poor Jewish workman, Hirsch Leckert. The 
Governor was slightly wounded, and Leckert was 
arrested, court-martialled, and condemned to death by 
hanging. But the Government was not yet satisfied. 
The execution was postponed, while for days together 
Leckert's wife, then about to become a mother, and the 
local Eabbi, under the pressure of the Administration, 
besought him to send a petition for pardon to the Tsar, 
assuring him that it would be granted. After under- 
going this torture for some time, Leckert at length gave 
in. The petition for pardon was forwarded, and when 
the Government had got what it was waiting for, the 
execution was carried out ; while Von Wahl was pro- 
moted to the post of Assistant-Minister of the Interior 
and Chief of the Gendarmerie of the Empire. 

In April, 1903, the Tsar gave his sanction to a new 
edition of the Penal Code, to come into force, all being 
well, in 1906, which is somewhat less complicated and 
more practical and, in a few details, more detailed 
than the old one. The gradation of punishment 
depends largely on the choice of certain types of 
imprisonment and labour ; but, as the various estab- 
lishments necessary to this gradation have never been 
built, punishments, in fact, very rarely answer to 
the paper sentence, and the comparatively innocent 
are often more harshly treated than degraded criminals. 
In theory the punishments will be somewhat more 
flexible, and a category of " conditional conviction " in 
which the punishment is waived subject to good be- 
haviour will be established. The substantial evils of 



56 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

the old system are untouched, however, and it is clear 
that no great improvement can be hoped for apart from 
fundamental political reform. The new Code (Art. 99) 
imposes the death penalty for attempts, or " intent to 
attempt," " to deprive the Emperor of his sovereign 
rights, or to limit those." It not only preserves very 
severe penalties for political and religious offences ; it 
actually introduces chastisement for cases of peaceful 
demonstrations, strikes, etc., not covered in the old 
Code. The worst anomalies of Russian " justice" are 
left intact. 

But who knows what may happen next year ? In 
the Code as it stands, offences against State and Church 
naturally, perhaps, come first in the eyes of the guardians 
of State and Church, crimes against private persons far 
behind. A long series of articles provide for the im- 
munity of the Government from the hostility and even 
the criticism of its subjects. Public blasphemy against 
" the glorious Triune God, or our Most Pure Ruler and 
Mother of God the ever- Virgin Mary, or the illustrious 
Cross of the Lord God our Saviour Jesus Christ, or the 
Incorporeal Heavenly Powers, or the Holy Saints of God 
and their Images," * is punishable by twelve years of 

* " I never entered the cathedral of St. Isaac in St. Petersburg," says Mr. 
George Kennan, in a paper on the Penal Code of 1885, " without finding on 
the frame of the ikon of the Madonna a number of small articles of apparel 
placed in order to acquire some miraculous virtue. It would be perfectly 
natural for an intelligent man, and even for a good man and a good Christian, 
to express irreverent, if not contemptuous, doubt as to the miracle-working 
power of this gilded and bejeweled picture. While visiting with my wife one of 
the holiest cathedrals in Moscow, I saw a number of ignorant Russian peasants 
devoutly kissing in succession twenty or thirty black decaying fragments of 
human bone which were set in the squares of what looked precisely like a 
checker-board. The bones were supposed to be finger joints, toe joints, and 
other osseous fragments of various ' Holy Saints of the Lord ' ; and many of 
the peasants pressed their lips to every bone in the collection, taking them 
row by row successively, from the lower right-hand to the upper left-hand 
corner of the checker-board. As I watched this performance I could not 
help expressing aloud to my wife an opinion with reference thereto which the 



THE LAND WITHOUT LAW 57 

penal servitude, with exile for life and loss of all civil 
rights ; while the same offence committed privately, 
but in the presence of witnesses, receives the penalty 
of exile without penal Servitude. Any one who, 
privately but before witnesses, or in print, dares to 
censure the Christian faith or the Orthodox Church and 
its Holy Sacraments is liable to exile to the remotest 
part of Siberia for life. It has often been pointed out 
that Count Tolstoy escapes this punishment ; but num- 
bers of less distinguished and less heinous offenders 
have suffered the same penalty that would have fallen 
upon them had they been guilty of homicide or in- 
cendiarism. Heresy and dissent are punishable, but 
the heaviest penalties are reserved for abjuration of the 
Orthodox faith and secession from the Church, and 
attempts to persuade others to secede. Under these 
various articles the petty police are frequently engaged 
in admonishing persons reported to them as neglectful 
of their religious duties, and especially of the Sacraments. 
On the side of the secular authority I need only 
quote the omnibus section under which many of the 
revolutionists whose stories are told on later pages 
were sentenced : — 

" 249. All persons who shall engage in rebellion against the 
Supreme Authority, that is who shall take part in collective 
and conspirative insurrection against the Gossudar and the 
Empire ; and also all persons who shall plan the overthrow of 
the Government in the Empire as a whole or in any part thereof ; 

ecclesiastical authorities would undoubtedly have regarded as blasphemous, 
and which, had I been a Russian, might have sent me to the most remote 
part of Siberia, if not into penal servitude. Many of the rites and ceremonies 
of the Russo-Greek Church are extremely injurious to the health of the 
people, and this is particularly the case with the universal custom of kissing 
sacred pictures and bones. Nothing probably has done more than this 
practice to spread contagious diseases among the ignorant peasants of the 
empire, and the terrible ravages of diphtheria in some of the provinces of 
European Russia are attributable mainly to this cause." 



58 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

or who shall intend to change the existing form of government or 
the order of succession to the throne established by law ; all 
persons who for the attainment of these ends shall organize or 
take part in a conspiracy, either actively and with knowledge of 
its object, or by participation in a conspirative meeting, or by 
storing and distributing weapons, or by other preparations for 
insurrection ; all such persons, including not only those most 
guilty, but their associates, instigators, prompters, helpers, and 
concealers, shall be deprived of all civil rights and put to death. 
Those who have knowledge of such evil intentions and of pre- 
parations to carry them into execution, and who, having power 
to inform the Government thereof, do not fulfil that duty, shall 
be subjected to the same punishment." 

By further sections, those found guilty of " com- 
posing and circulating written or printed documents 
calculated to create disrespect for the Tsar or the 
Government" are subject to ten or twelve years of 
penal servitude, exile for the rest of their life, and loss 
of all civil rights ; while those who, without violent 
intent, " have organized a society intended to attain 
at a more or less remote time in the future the objects set 
forth in section 249, or have joined such an association, 
shall suffer from four to six years of penal servitude, 
with exile for life, and loss of all civil rights, or im- 
prisonment in a fortress for not more than four years." 
It will thus be seen that no open reform agitation is 
possible, and that a man who finds that his brother 
belongs to a society which contemplates a " change in 
the existing form of government," and does not betray 
him, may be sent to exile for life. The writing or 
circulation of " documents containing unpermitted 
judgments with regard to the ordinances and actions 
of the Government," membership of any secret society 
of any kind, the publication of the proceedings of legal 
meetings without permission of the Governor, are 
among the long list of other severely punishable 



THE LAND WITHOUT LAW 59 

offences. Any one who leaves the Empire and becomes 
a foreign subject without leave, if he return, may be 
exiled for life. If he does not return when summoned, 
his property may be confiscated. Under this provision 
Turgeniev was brought back from Paris in 1863 to 
answer for something he had written. If we bear in 
mind the hideous network of penalties of which these 
are but a few outstanding specimens, it will not 
surprise us to find that those who dared to challenge 
the "paternal" Tsardom were for years a mere handful 
of ardent youths, and that their sole support lay in the 
secret sympathy of a society not courageous enough to 
follow their heroic example. 

All this is barbarity and stupidity in the superlative 
degree, but law may be marked by much cruelty, and 
yet be not beyond hope, and even respect. The cha- 
racteristic of the oligarchic system in Eussia is not that 
the law is antiquated, stupid, and cruel, but that over 
wide stretches of the national life law does not exist at 
all, that what of law there once was has been destroyed, 
and lawless force established in its place. This has 
been accomplished in two main ways — by courts-martial, 
and by what is known as administrative process. 

During the last years of Alexander II., throughout 
the reign of Alexander III., and for the latter half of 
the past decade under Nicholas II., most charges of 
crime against officials have been referred to courts- 
martial sitting in secret, with no right of appeal and 
but the slightest opportunities for the defence. Offences 
against the State were always subject to exceptional 
jurisdiction as well as exceptional legislation, but from 
1864 to 1878 they were tried by regular courts, though 
without juries, and officials did not yet share the 
special privileges of the Emperor. In the latter year 
Vera Zassulitch, who shot General Trepov, putative 



60 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

father of the hero of the massacres of January 22, 1905, 
in St. Petersburg, was tried by a jury, and her acquittal 
put an end once for all to the open and democratic 
process in political affairs.* Offences against function- 
aries, including " all acts of violence, threats, and 
clamours," were referred " temporarily " to special 
courts, and, as Leroy-Beaulieu says, "from top to 
bottom of the ladder the agents of the Government 
were thus placed outside the pale of common law." 
But this was not enough. " Discontented with the 
civil tribunals, the Government preferred the more 
expeditious and severer justice of courts-martial." A 
little later a further step was taken. "Military 
governors-general were instituted, in whose favour all 
civil laws were suspended, who were invested with the 
power of arraigning before courts-martial persons 
coming under the jurisdiction of the regular courts, 
and of banishing ' by administrative act ' any sus- 
pected person. In a country where the gendarmerie 
ruled supreme, all this, it is true, was no great inno- 
vation theoretically ; the novelty lay in the practical 
extent given to these arbitrary measures. The habitual 
procedure of courts-martial was deemed too slow ; the 
governors- general were empowered to simplify it by 
resorting to the summary form of justice in use in time 
of war. It became lawful to bring accused persons to 
trial without preliminary inquest, to pronounce sentence 
on them without taking the oral testimony of witnesses, 
to execute them without examining into their appeals 

* " The Bulletin de l'Institut Internationale de Statistique," tome xi. 
1899, contains some interesting international comparisons. In the years 
1889-93, of all the cases before tribunals without juries, charges of rebellion 
or outrages on officials were 2*3 per cent, in France, and 16 per cent, in 
Kussia. On the other hand, it is significant that of prisoners tried in courts of 
first instance a very much larger proportion were acquitted in Russia than in 
other countries. 



THE LAND WITHOUT LAW 61 

for a reversal of the sentence. As in everything else, no 
uniform rule and no consistent methods were followed. 
Political cases are tried according to circumstances, to 
their importance, or the inspiration of the moment, by a 
court-martial or by a judicial commission. The ukazes 
of Alexander III., on the ' state of enforced, or extra- 
ordinary, protection,' really amount to placing a blank 
warrant in the administration's hands." 

The warrant was in full use long before the recent 
crisis arose. Thus the state of siege existing in the 
autumn of 1901 in the provinces of St. Petersburg, 
Moscow, Kharkov, Ekaterinoslav, Kiev, Podolia, and 
Volynia, and in St. Petersburg, Odessa, five other 
towns, and several rural districts, was renewed for a 
further year in those places, and at the same time was 
extended to eighteen leading towns and other districts, 
so that during 1902, out of the fifty provinces of 
European Eussia (not counting Finland and Poland) no 
less than twenty-four and one Siberian province were 
under exceptional rule. This meant, if the circumstances 
really answered to those legally justifying the state of 
siege, that the most active half of the people of the 
Empire were engaged in " criminal attempts against 
the existing regime or against the safety of private 
persons and property, so that the application of ordinary 
laws proved insufficient for the maintenance of order. 
This was, no doubt, true in large measure, if by " the 
existing regime " be meant the arbitrary rule of satraps 
like Trepov, Von Wahl, Obolensky, Clayhills, and 
other notorious governors. But in that case martial 
"law" is admittedly a terrorism imposed by a gang of 
desperate brigands, and is a negation not only of law, 
but of order and decency. In fact, the powers given to 
these governors and prefects include the prohibition of 
all gatherings, private as well as public, the expulsion of 



62 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

any one they may choose to regard as suspicious without 
any form of trial, the closing of any shop or workshop, 
the discharge of any civil officers, the prohibition of 
the carrying of any weapons, even pocket-knives, and 
of collections of money without special permit. 

This is, indeed, little more than a wholesale exten- 
sion of the retail punishment by " administrative order " 
which for thirty years has been the most scandalous 
feature of the governmental system. Administrative 
punishment is simply punishment on suspicion, or on 
pretence of suspicion, without any semblance of judicial 
process. It begins with an odious police surveillance, 
with the midnight searches and raids that mark every 
period of public excitement in the great towns ; proceeds 
by arrest, " preliminary detention," and inquisition ; and 
may end in simple rustication, or in a graver term of 
imprisonment or exile. Mr. Kennan gave statistics 
showing that of the whole number of exiles passing into 
Siberia nearly a half had not been before any tribunal 
(in 1893 they were 49 per cent.), and most of the cases 
related in the following chapters belong to the same 
category. Early in his reign Nicholas II. was credited 
in the English press with having abolished this arbitrary 
penal process. The ukaz of January, 1896, one of 
many farcical pretences of reform during the present 
reign, revoked the privilege held since 1881 by governors- 
general, provincial governors, and prefects, of banishing 
from their districts of their own motion objectionable 
persons other than political suspects, and made the 
Minister of the Interior responsible for all cases of 
administrative imprisonment and exile, political or 
non-political. The governors being the servants of 
this Minister, the measure effected a simplification of 
procedure which rather strengthened than weakened 
the system. In fact, 1699 convicts and exiles were sent 



THE LAND WITHOUT LAW 63 

to Sakhalin by administrative order in that very year. 
Only fragments of statistics on the subject can be 
obtained. At the beginning of last year Mr. Muraviev, 
then Minister of Justice, stated that the number of 
political cases dealt with by " administrative sentence " 
had increased twenty-seven fold during the past decade. 
If to these be added the very much larger number of 
those arrested and liberated after "preliminary investiga- 
tion," it is evident that the victims of official vengeance 
number scores of thousands yearly. A report of the 
Ministry of Justice in 1903 showed that in the first three 
months of the previous year 2953 persons were arrested 
on suspicion of political activity (that is, at the rate of 
about 11,000 a year), of whom 853 were sentenced 
administratively. But in addition to these over 2000 
persons were arrested and imprisoned by the gendarmerie 
under " state of siege " powers ; and even these figures 
give no idea of the many thousands of workmen, stu- 
dents, and others exiled from the large towns without 
any inquiry whatever. 

" Nobody," says Professor P. Vinogradoff,* the 
well-known historian, lately of Moscow University, "is 
secure against search, arrest, imprisonment, and relega- 
tion to the remote parts of the Empire. From political 
supervision, the solicitude of the authorities has spread 
to interference with all kinds of private affairs. To-day 
somebody is sent out by command of a governor 
because he is suspected of immoral conduct ; to-morrow 
somebody else, because he is practising hypnotism ; and 
then again, young people guilty of a disturbance in the 
streets are sentenced to months of imprisonment without 
the formality of a trial, by order of a master of police. 
Such is the legal protection we are enjoying in Kussia." 

* " Lectures on the History of the Nineteenth Century." Cambridge 
University Press, 1903. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE UNDERWORLD : MENDEL ROSENBAUM's STORY 

To those who have read Prince Kropotkin's " Eussian 
and French Prisons," Stepniak's " Eussia under the 
Tsars," Mr. George Kennan's articles on " The Prison 
Life of the Eussian Eevolutionists," E. B. Lanin's 
" Eussian Characteristics," and other works of the same 
period, it may seem incredible that the penal system 
of the Empire can be more cruel and destructive to-day 
than it was proved to be in the past. Yet, after having 
watched closely the development of events for fifteen 
years, after being intimately acquainted during this 
period with men belonging to three separate generatioDs 
who have suffered almost every possible variety of 
punishment at the hands of the agents of the oligarchy, 
and with the records of several hundreds of individual 
cases at hand as I write, I venture the opinion that, 
bad as were the wrongs which prematurely ripened the 
movement of revolt twenty-five years ago, those of 
to-day are more abominable still. Volumes would be 
required fully to justify this impression, and my present 
object is only to offer authentic reports of a few typical 
experiences. But it may be pointed out that the mass 
of misery caused by the overcrowding of prisons has 
been doubly aggravated of late — in the first place, by 
the growth of the revolutionary movement in all its 
parts, and the disproportionate increase of arrests 

• 6 4 



THE UNDERWORLD 65 

already referred to ; in the second place, by the curtail- 
ment of the exile system under the decree of June 10, 
1900, and in consequence of the demands upon the 
Eastern railway communications for the war. Before 
the recent crisis, the normal permanent population for 
which prison accommodation was required numbered 
about a hundred and twenty thousand, one-sixth of 
these being women and children. To house this army 
of unfortunates there were seven central hard-labour 
prisons and nearly nine hundred local gaols. The new 
central prison in St. Petersburg and one or two others 
were models of Western severity. In the rest, order 
and sanitation were practically unknown ; dirt, pro- 
miscuity, disorder, and overcrowding were general. 
But, in the interval, the whole force of the police and 
gendarmerie has been engaged in increasing the pressure 
upon this already too limited space, with results some 
idea of which may be obtained from the following 
narratives. 

In the summer of 1900, Mendel Rosenbaum, a Russian 
of Jewish extraction, who had been captured at the 
frontier in October, 1898, attempting to import pro- 
hibited literature, thrown into prison, and removed to the 
provinces as a preliminary to Siberian exile, managed 
to escape to Switzerland with the aid of a small sum 
granted from a special fund raised by the Society of 
Friends of Russian Freedom. By the kindness of a 
Russian friend I have obtained a full account of his 
peregrination through a series of prisons, and from these 
notes I now quote some passages. 

Rosenbaum was first taken under escort of two 
gendarmes to St. Petersburg, and locked up in a cell of 
the House of Preliminary Detention, where he spent 
two days with little to complain of, except the food. 
On the third day, after a preliminary examination by a 



66 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

gendarme officer and a Crown attorney, he was trans- 
ferred to the Fortress of St. Peter and St. Paul, subjected 
to a microscopic search of his naked body, clad in the 
scanty linen garb of the prison, and locked up in a 
solitary cell. At the end of a month his first exami- 
nation took place, and after eight months more a 
second, the object being to obtain incriminating evi- 
dence against other offenders, or possible offenders, of 
the same desperate character. (It was in this work of 
secret inquisition that Plehve and the late Minister 
of Justice, Muraviev, won their spurs.) One day the 
Assistant Procuror told Rosenbaum, by way of consola- 
tion, that he was liable under the Penal Code to several 
years of penal servitude in the mines and deportation 
for life, whereas he might hope to get off, under the 
merciful system of " administrative order," with five 
years' exile to the Yakutsk province. 

"The prospect of being kept in solitary confinement 
indefinitely, while they would try to collect evidence 
against me, counted for something. So, when the papers 
establishing my past were shown to me, I offered to 
tell the officials all about myself which might lead to 
my conviction, but without giving the names of places 
and persons concerned, or any particulars which might 
lead to the indictment of any person save myself." 

This, however, was by no means good enough, and 
the inquiries became more frequent. Notwithstanding 
the penalties of long solitude in an ill-lighted cell, 
Rosenbaum kept his humour. One day a gendarmerie 
officer in glorious uniform called to see how the investi- 
gation was proceeding. 

" Well, is he getting out with it ? Does he write it 
down ? " he asked. 

" He does," replied the colonel ; " but far from 
satisfactorily/' 



THE UNDERWORLD 67 

The general turned to Rosenbaum and, in a half- 
coaxing, half-reproachful tone, said, " Write on, write 
on ; and do write better." 

" I can't do better," was the reply ; " my handwriting 
was always bad." 

" Oh, it is not the handwriting I mean, and you 
understand that ; " then, turning to his subordinates, he 
added, " Never mind, let him have a little longer 
experience of the prison cell, and I am sure his writing 
will improve." Then he left. 

Of his chief examiner Rosenbaum says in his notes : 
" Evidently the smart assistant procuror put it to his 
great credit that he and his like do not burn people 
nowadays, as the Spanish Inquisitors did. That 
explains his constantly pleasant and self-complacent 
frame of mind. He evidently possessed in a consider- 
able degree the enviable faculty of forgetting all dis- 
agreeable facts. He forgot, for example, how many 
young, energetic, and noble men and women had 
perished far away, torn from their kinsfolk and friends. 
He forgot how many had lost their reason in solitary 
confinement, to which they were subjected by the 
' humanitarian ' government for being found in posses- 
sion of a few prohibited books, or simply on a vague 
suspicion of their being ' politically untrustworthy/ 
He overlooked the fact that, though he and his like did 
not actually burn people for their convictions, yet the 
' mild measures ' of the Russian gendarmerie have some- 
times led people to burn themselves alive. He did not 
understand that his white, well-kept hands, which he 
so often rubbed with self-satisfaction, were stained with 
the blood of youths whose only fault was their yearning 
for the embodiment of ideals, possible or Utopian, but 
in any case noble, youths whose lives were crushed in 
some way or other." 



68 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

At last the strain began to tell. The food was 
decent, and, in the second winter, the cell was warm 
enough; books were allowed, but the light from the 
small, high, thickly grated window was dim ; and the 
monotony was only broken by a walk of fifteen minutes 
daily in the small courtyard of the fortress. 

"My isolation was made more complete by the 
idiotic rule of the fortress-jail, according to which the 
letters a prisoner receives from his near and dear ones 
are given him only for about an hour's duration to read, 
and are then reclaimed, and never restored. An ad- 
ditional trial to my nerves was the compulsion to sleep 
with a candle lighted. I tried my best to keep up my 
strength by filling up the abyss of endless vacancy of 
my cell existence. I read, mostly history. I studied 
Italian. But in the dull weather the cell was so dark 
that reading was made impossible. I regularly engaged 
in gymnastics, and, at times, even danced within my 
four walls (there was plenty of room for that, as the 
only furniture of the cell consisted of an iron bedstead, 
a small table, and a washstand, all of them screwed to 
the floor). The linen was changed twice a week, and I 
profited by these occasions to wash the floor of my cell, 
using the left-ofT things for it. I asked for some imple- 
ment for this purpose, but was refused. 

" The enforced silence was a great trial to me. At 
times the desire to use my vocal organs reached the 
stage of physical oppression ; but, when I took to singing, 
the wicket of my door was unlocked and opened, and I 
was seriously told that any loud sound was not per- 
mitted in the prison. Then I took to acting. Faust 
was my favourite, and I know at present almost the 
whole of it by heart in the original. I believe that 
many a time the sentinel, watching me through the 
glazed aperture in the door (with a shutter outside), 



THE UNDERWORLD 69 

and seeing me gesticulating and posing, took me for a 
madman. But I had to recite my soliloquies in a 
whisper only, and this so tired my throat that it became 
sore." 

At last, after sixteen months in the fortress, and 
after two medical examinations, the prisoner was trans- 
ferred to the House of Preliminary Detention. This, 
however, proved to be already full, so it was resolved 
to let Rosenbaum spend a few months somewhere in 
the country, to gain some strength before being exiled 
to the Yakutsk province. 

At last Rosenbaum was ordered to be sent by etape * 
to Tchernigov, to remain there under surveillance until 
his health was recovered sufficiently to allow of his 
deportation. First, he was taken to the Forwarding 
Prison, where the parties are made up at intervals. A 
ten days' wait was necessary in this instance. " I was 
first placed," Rosenbaum says, "in a solitary cell which 
was only some three and a half by four and a half paces 
across. Later I was put into a large room, in which 
the door was replaced by a grating giving into the 

* This barbarous method of conveying prisoners to their destination in 
gangs under escort from one gaol to another is described by a former 
political suspect in a pamphlet published by the Society of Friends of Russian 
Freedom, under the title " A Journey by Etape." The narrative ends thus : 
" Just three months had passed since our arrest. Ordinary travellers made 
this journey in five days, and we in three terrible months ; and, indeed, it 
was only by good fortune that we reached our destination alive at all. We 
were so changed and emaciated that our relations stared at us in horror and 
could not listen to the story of our journey without tears. And all this was 
inflicted upon peaceable Russian subjects, among whom were men of 
University education, doctors, lavjyers, etc., simply because his Majesty the 
Emperor intended to pass through Tiflis — though, after all, he never came." 
This journey was in the summer of 1888 ; but most of the essential features 
of the system are the same to-day. If the route has neither a railway nor a 
steamer line, the prisoners of " unprivileged birth " — those not belonging to 
the classes of nobility, clergy, or notables — have to march on foot, one or 
more carts being provided to carry the sick and infirm, the "privileged," and 
the property of the whole party. 



70 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

prison chapel. A strange sight was presented by this 
place of worship of the Glod of Love and Mercy during 
the service. The first rows of worshippers were filled 
with the prison authorities — the corpulent, dark, good- 
natured chief of the jail, with his family ; his thin, 
bilious-looking assistant, some warders, all in glittering 
uniform, with jingling, deadly weapons of all kinds, 
praying to the meek, all-pardoning, loving Christ. 
Then came the main grey mass of the prisoners, the 
half-shaven heads and chins of many of them, the 
emaciated little faces of children, arrested for beggary 
or trifling theft and now sent away to their respective 
homes, or to other places of detention, in striking con- 
trast with the glittering silver and gold and the elaborate 
decorations of the church. The priest preached a sermon 
after the liturgy was over. He had no other consolation 
to give, or principle to implant in his flock, than a few 
platitudes on the duty of every one to bear obedience to 
the powers that be. Every day the Forwarding Prison 
either received or sent away prisoners — resembling a 
constantly boiling kettle of human life. I cannot find 
words to express the painful impression which the 
constant humming and bubble of this bee-hive made on 
my nerves, accustomed to the tomb-like silence of the 
fortress. I was allowed a double time for exercise in 
the courtyard ; I had a walk by myself as a political 
prisoner, and another given to the sick, in company 
with the common offenders and criminals. Among the 
latter I remembered a native of Lithuania, who lacked 
many teeth. He explained to me that they had been 
broken by the police at Mitau, by whom he was merci- 
lessly beaten." Some of his fellow- prisoners were 
simply being taken to their homes in the country, 
" this being the favourite means of the administration 
for clearing the capital of unemployed." He was 



' 




8 



^ 



h -2 



g s 



THE UNDERWORLD 71 

pleasantly surprised to find that the " politicals " were 
understood and esteemed, and that the revolutionary 
propaganda was spreading, even among the most lowly 
classes, one of the prisoners, for instance, quoting a 
clandestine organ Rabochya Misl {The Workers' 
Thought). One of the party was a woman who had 
lived for two years in man's dress doing man's work 
and was now unemployed. 

At last the start was made. Vilna was reached 
after a night in a crowded railway-carriage. He thus 
describes the local Forwarding Prison : " It was formerly 
a convent, and has not been improved since. A quite 
drunken old warder opened the gate, and led us into a 
cold, damp room, which looked like a cellar. The 
formalities and the searching of each prisoner were 
exceedingly long and tiring. At last we were taken to 
a long narrow cell, which was almost wholly occupied 
by a sleeping-platform made of boards, with no trace of 
a sheet, mattress, pillow, or blanket on it. The room 
was very dimly lit by a lamp hanging from the ceiling, 
which smoked horribly. The walls were black with 
filth, and reeking with damp. In the narrow passage 
left by the platform stood a tub, which filled the room 
with an unbearable stench. The platform was occupied 
by sitting and reclining prisoners, and we, the new 
comers, had to fight to get places. But for the friendly 
assistance of a very good-natured fellow with powerful 
fists, who was being deported for robbery, and took a 
fancy to me, I should certainly have been left without 
any plank to lie upon. The place looked like pande- 
monium, and this impression was greatly strengthened 
by a strange figure crouched on the floor before the 
stove. The head of this creature was invisible, as it 
was covered with a large pointed felt hat, which went 
down to the shoulders. Three apertures were torn in 



72 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

it for the mouth and eyes, and these eyes, black and 
glowing, and two rows of small, white teeth, blinked 
every now and then through the holes. This strange 
creature was constantly muttering something in Polish, 
which seemed to be prayers ; then, at intervals, he put 
his hands to his chest and yelled wildly. A well-dressed 
young prisoner, with all the appearance of a smart 
sharper, who seemed to be the despot of the place, 
snatched the felt hat from the unfortunate creature's 
head, and gave him a cuff on the neck. Several of the 
weaker characters indulged in a subservient laugh. I 
protested against this idiotic ill-treatment, and as the 
fists of my friend the robber were on my side the 
unfortunate madman was left alone. He was doubtless 
mad ; the only question was whether he was arrested 
while already insane, or had gone mad under arrest. 

" The gangs of prisoners sent off by etape were 
formed in the Vilna prison once a fortnight, and started 
on Sundays. So, on the preceding Friday, the jail 
began to overflow with fresh parties of prisoners arriving. 
I had the works of Lermontov with me, and read a 
good deal of his heavenly poetry to some of these 
uneducated, depraved, and apparently coarse men. It 
was touching and striking to watch the effect of the 
music of Lermontov's verse, and of his noble thought 
and fiery feeling, on them. They implored me to leave 
them the book, and I did so. On Saturday some more 
people arrived, and the overcrowding became indescrib- 
able. Suffice it to say that, into the room formerly 
occupied by myself and my fellow-prisoner, on the 
door of which there was a notice that it contained nine 
cubic fathoms of air (and what air J), sixty -four persons 
were now squeezed ! 

"At last Sunday came, and I had to leave this 
truly mediaeval prison. From Yilna to Minsk I had to 



THE UNDERWORLD 73 

travel in a separate railway-carriage in company with 
six ' political ' Jews, four of whom were being trans- 
ported to Siberia, workmen employed in tanning. One 
of these was a man of Herculean build and strength. 
The whole company were being exiled for having insti- 
gated or taken part in strikes, but the modern Samson, 
who was accompanied by his wife, was also charged 
with very rough handling of some spies. The tanners 
told me that they were escorted in Vilna from the 
prison to the railway-station by an enormous convoy of 
police and gendarmes to prevent demonstrations in 
their honour, as such demonstrations had already 
occurred on behalf of other political prisoners ; and this 
I quite believed, because, when our train stopped at ? a 
small place not far from Vilna, we found some fifteen 
tanners from a neighbouring tannery already waiting 
for the exiles, whom they greeted with cheers and 
waiving of handkerchiefs. 

" Down to the little town of Gorodnya we went by 
rail, and I cannot describe the disgusting scenes of 
obscenity openly perpetrated in the carriage. In 
Gorodnya I passed the night, and had a glimpse of 
three workmen incarcerated for trade-unionist activity, 
who were treated in the most shameful manner. Next 
morning I started for Tchernigov, together with three 
common prisoners, one of whom was a peasant woman 
condemned to seventeen years' hard labour for the 
murder of her husband. Her good-natured face, and 
the truth that unwittingly leaked out through her own 
narrative, proved clearly that the murder had been 
committed by her lover, but that she had taken the 
guilt on herself to save him. My other fellow-prisoner 
was a boy, who was being sent to the reformatory 
colony for having stolen some pens. The third person 
was a dissenter, of the type called ' Old Believers,' 



74 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

who was being sent to the infirmary for the state of his 
mind to be inquired into, because he had presented the 
Dowager Empress with a petition. This petition, which 
consisted of twelve foolscap pages, he wrote in the 
Slavonic character, the only writing he had learned to 
understand while in prison. The knowledge of the law 
exhibited by this almost illiterate man was really 
astonishing. 

" There was no railway line between Gorodnya and 
Tchernigov, so we had to travel in the apostolic way. 
We had a peasant cart with us, which went slowly, so 
as to keep pace with the marching convoy. But I 
preferred exercise, and so walked almost all the way. 
The snow was sufficiently strong to bear the weight of 
a man, and I marched cheerfully along, greedily inhal- 
ing the bracing air, and feeling that every breath 
brought strength and energy to my soul and body." 

Rosenbaum reached his place of detention on March 
8-21, 1900, and almost immediately began to plan his 
escape. The difficulty was that he was closely watched 
and had to report himself regularly to the police. 
After two months, however, he left Tchernigov, stayed 
for some time in the country far from the frontier 
while the hue and cry subsided, and then, with the aid 
of an "emigration agent" and a false passport, succeeded, 
after a series of adventures too lengthy to recount here, 
in crossing the German-Polish frontier. 

In these experiences of a man whose crime con- 
sisted in introducing into Russia one trunk and two 
portmanteaus, all with double sides, tops, and bottoms, 
containing about sixty-five pounds' weight of prohibited 
or suspected literature, may be seen imperfectly reflected 
some of the grossest vices of the Russian penal system : 
the denial of personal rights ; the pain of long soli- 
tude, on the one hand, and of overcrowding, filth, 



THE UNDERWORLD 75 

and promiscuity on the other ; the moral torture of 
repeated secret inquisitions ; the threat of distant exile 
or a worse fate. Imagine the lot of a woman — and 
there have been many — subjected to such tortures. It 
is even worse for the workman who, as one of the " un- 
privileged " class, is treated with least ceremony. In a 
letter, published in May, 1900, by the " Political Eed 
Cross " (a secret benevolent society for the help of 
political prisoners and exiles), a factory worker who 
suffered for participation in a strike thus describes his 
experiences : — 

" The first three days after my arrest I was allowed 
no books. I was searched throughout, my mouth, 
nostrils, ears, hair, nails, and other parts of my body 
were investigated. It was a revolting performance, but 
they made their excursions so promptly and unexpectedly 
that I could do nothing to prevent it. Then I was told 
that the rules of the prison forbade any singing, 
whistling, loud talking, tearing bits of paper out of 
books, or writing in them (one of the usual ways of 
intercommunication between solitary prisoners). In 
case of infringing one of these rules, punishment will 
follow, in the form of deprivation of out-door walks, 
then incarceration in a penitentiary cell, and then 
something still more severe (i.e. flogging). On the 
fourth day I was given a New Testament, while, in a 
week, the colonel of gendarmes visited me, and, at the 
same time, I was allowed to read other books. The 
colonel asked me, ' What is the reason of thy arrest ? ' 
I replied that he knew it better than myself ; ' I do 
not know it.' ' Ah ! indeed ! Is it so ? ' he began to 
shout at the top of his voice, stamping his feet at me. 
' Only criminals are being incarcerated here, and we 
keep them here to squeeze the hidden truth out of 
them, 5 he went on. Interrogations are often conducted 



76 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

in the cell ; it may be in the morning, during the day, 
or late at night, so that one is in constant strain, 
in constant expectation, both in daytime and at night, 
that the colonel may intrude and begin his tyrannizing 
work. The nervous system gets very much upset, and 
one is on the verge of hallucinations." All this was, 
however, only a prelude. 

Soon the authorities found out that their victim 
was greatly attached to his old mother. For eight 
months they denied her an interview with him, repre- 
senting that her boy, by his obstinacy, was bringing 
misery on himself and his family, till she began to 
write him most distressing letters. " What is to become 
of us ? " she wrote ; "we have no money, no bread, no 
boots, and we are being turned out of our lodgings." 
All these reproaches were the more heartrending in that 
they were intermingled with expressions of tender love. 
The prisoner wrote back to his mother that she should 
take heart, that a man has some higher duties than to 
keep up personal comforts, namely, to serve his country 
and the whole of humanity. One day the mother was 
brought to the prison, but her son still refused to betray 
his cause and his comrades. He was then removed to 
a penitentiary cell, which he thus describes : " A very 
small cell, absolutely dark, with cold brick walls and 
floor ; the bed has protruding nail-heads of the size of 
nuts all over ; although the room is heated twice a day, 
it is cold, because the warming arrangements are such 
that only the ceiling is heated. If one stands up with 
one's feet on the bed, one's head is burning, while his 
back, hands, and feet are bitterly cold. It is impossible 
to sit against the wall or lie down on the floor because 
of the cold. To lie on the bed is also impracticable 
because of the nails. So one is compelled to walk ; but 
to do this in absolute darkness is likewise beyond human 



THE UNDERWORLD 77 

possibility ; you may pace the floor once, then you miss 
the direction and knock your head against the wall or 
your leg against the bedstead." 

These are, as we should say, normal, even fortunate 
instances ; really, under the rule of oligarchy it is 
caprice and accident more even than injustice and 
brutality that are normal conditions of the punitive and 
"preventive" system. A case which roused the dull 
mind of Moscow nearly ten years ago remains thoroughly 
typical of what may happen at any time in any town of 
the Empire. In the summer of 1895 wholesale arrests 
were made as a result of the University troubles. One 
of those thrown into prison was a young, hard-working, 
and highly nervous girl, Angela Karpouzi, a student in 
the classes for medical assistants. She had nothing to 
do with the revolutionary movement ; but one of her 
friends was concerned in the agitation. 

The search, arrest, and imprisonment had a most 
painful and depressing effect on her. Her nervousness 
increased, she got into a state of constant restlessness. 
Week after week passed without her being summoned 
to an inquiry; the gendarmes, having nothing with 
which to charge her, had simply forgotten her existence. 
But she probably knew some of the well-attested cases 
in which girls and women, unjustly arrested, were 
terrorized by officers of the character of General Strel- 
nikov, and she came to the conclusion that they wanted 
to bury her in gaol till she became weak enough to 
incriminate her friends. This fear, working on an 
excitable imagination and nervous nature, in the un- 
healthy surroundings of the gaol, resulted at last in a 
real mental disease. One night the poor girl awoke, 
thinking that she heard horrible cries, and that she 
recognized the voice of a girl friend. It was an halluci- 
nation, but to the unfortunate prisoner it conveyed the 



7% RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

blackest meaning ; and she resolved not to sleep any 
more, from fear of being hypnotized when asleep. She 
walked about her cell all that night, and then she refused 
to take food. In a forgotten cell of a Moscow prison this 
poor victim of the Tsardom was tortured day and night 
by most horrible imaginings. She thought she saw her 
brother being taken to the gallows, her friends being 
put to the rack. At times she shrieked and implored 
help in a loud voice. The sentinel or warder would 
peep in through the aperture in the cell door charac- 
teristically called the " Judas." But, as " the young lady 
did no harm," they left her alone. It was " nobody's 
business." At last she decided t© end her misery. She 
put everything in order in her cell, sat down on her 
bed, covered her head with a shawl, and taking the 
cover of a tin kettle, began to cut at her wrist, trying 
to open the artery. Then she tore at her flesh with a 
metal comb. At last blood poured out, staining her 
skirt and shawl, and she fainted. All this was at night, 
and when she awoke from the frightful pain in her 
hand, it was already day. Again she seized the comb, 
but this time the warder's eye was indeed at the 
" Judas." The door of her cell was hastily opened, 
the girl seized, the comb wrenched from her hand, a 
doctor summoned, and her wrist bandaged. 

Soon afterwards, the governor came and told her 
that she would be immediately taken to the inquiry. 
She had believed she was herself to be hanged ; and 
when asked by the officials to put in writing her name 
and other usual official particulars with which an 
inquiry begins, asked, "Why cannot I be hanged 
without this ? " This made a sensation, but when the 
authorities looked at her signature the sensation became 
still greater, for it was seen that she had muddled up 
all the letters. The Crown Attorney ordered a cup of 



THE UNDERWORLD 79 

tea to be brought for her ; but she only asked whether 
she was to be poisoned instead of being hanged, as all 
her friends and relatives had been. Still they tried to 
subject her to an examination, but she made no reply 
to any questions. Seeing at last that they had to do 
with one whose mind was hopelessly deranged, the 
authorities decided to abandon the attempt. A cab 
was called, the cabman told the address of the un- 
fortunate girl's former lodgings, and she was set free. 
The landlady of the rooms sent at once for her brother, 
and she was then placed in the care of a well-known 
Kussian specialist in lunacy, Dr. Korsakov, who took 
much pains in collecting evidence as to the case. 

The head-quarters of the Moscow espionage 
(Okhrannoe Otdelenie) for some time refused the 
necessary permit to leave the city, insisting that the 
insane girl should call for it in person. At last, she 
was allowed to go to the South of Russia. In the 
town of Novorossysk, where she settled, she would 
probably have completely recovered ; but as soon as 
the police noticed the improvement, she was summoned 
to answer inquisitorial questions, and her mania 
returned. She then disappeared, whither my infor- 
mants do not know. 



CHAPTER V 

THE OLD BASTILLE 

Some day, when the fortress of St. Peter and St. Paul 
falls into the hands of the representatives of the Eussian 
people, the ill-fame of the Bastille of Paris will be for- 
gotten amid the shout of execration with which the 
records of this Imperial dungeon will be received. 
Here the Decembrist leaders were buried, and, after 
them, many of the leaders of the revolutionary move- 
ment of the seventies. Kropotkin has written of it at 
this period from personal experience, Stepniak and 
Kennan from masses of first-hand evidence. I shall 
not attempt to retrace the ground they have covered, 
or even to print in full the experiences of friends who 
have suffered there in recent years. I am assured that 
Prince Kropotkin's words are still fully applicable : the 
fortress is " a true grave, where the prisoner hears no 
human voice and sees no human being, except two or 
three gaolers, deaf and mute when addressed by the 
prisoners. You never hear a sound, excepting that of a 
sentry continually creeping like a hunter from one door 
to another to look through the ' Judas ' into the cells. 
You are never alone, an eye is continually kept upon 
you; and yet you are always alone. If you address 
a word to the warder who brings you your dress for 
walking in the yard, if you ask him what is the 
weather, he never answers. The only human being 

80 



THE OLD BASTILLE 81 

with whom I exchanged a few words every morning 
was the Colonel who came to write down what I had to 
buy — tobacco or paper. But he never dared to enter 
into conversation, as he himself was always watched by 
some of the warders. The absolute silence is interrupted 
only by the bells of the clock which ring a change every 
quarter of an hour, each hour a canticle, and each twelve 
hours ' God Save the Tsar.' In addition to all this, 
the cacophony of the discordant bells is horrible during 
rapid changes of temperature, and I do not wonder that 
nervous persons consider these bells as one of the plagues 
of the fortress. Half of the prisoners there have been 
arrested on a simple denunciation of a spy, or as mere 
acquaintances of revolutionists ; and half of them, after 
having been kept for years, will not even be brought 
before a court, or, if brought, will be acquitted, and — 
as was the case in the trial of the 193 — thereupon sent 
to Siberia, or to some hamlet on the shores of the Arctic 
Ocean, by a simple order of the administration. The 
inquiry is pursued in secrecy, and nobody knows how 
long it will last, which law will be applied (the common 
or the martial), what will be the fate of the prisoner. 
He may be acquitted, but also he may be hung. No 
counsel is allowed during the inquiry, no conversation, 
no correspondence with relations about the circumstances 
which led to the arrest. During all this exceedingly 
long time, no occupation is allowed to the prisoners. 
As to workmen and peasants, to keep them without 
any occupation is merely to bring them to despair. 
Hence the great proportion of cases of insanity." 

It is believed that, since August, 1884, the fortress 
has been used only for preliminary, not for permanent, 
detention, but this may be a lengthy process. With 
Maxim Gorky, last winter — watched by the whole world 
— it lasted only two months ; with Dr. Soskice, the 

G 



82 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

barrister and author whose story will be found in a 
later chapter, it lasted a year; with Leo Tessler, ar- 
rested in 1889, and Moses Lurie, in 1901 — both here- 
after referred to — it lasted twenty-six and twenty-five 
months respectively. The fact is that the police are at 
their wits' end to find prison-room, in spite of the 
millions spent in recent years on new buildings, and so 
have been compelled to use an ancient bagnio, the very 
name of which is a synonym for all the crimes a 
tyrannical government can inflict upon its most helpless 
and most enlightened subjects. 

"Those who have never undergone anything like 
solitary confinement/' writes a friend who suffered a 
long term of incarceration in the Petropavlovsk fortress, 
" can hardly realize what torture it involves. The long 
confinement of an invalid to his bed or chair has been 
repeatedly described as one of the greatest calamities a 
human being can experience. And such it is. But in 
this our misfortune we are mostly cared for. A solitary 
prisoner is carefully deprived of all relief, while the 
feeling of dependence, helplessness, and uselessness, 
which is the greatest of the trials of an invalid, is 
further aggravated by the feeling of injustice and 
humiliation. All occupation, all the little duties, 
necessities, and cares of everyday life, which take up 
so much of our time, being systematically withheld from 
the prisoner, he is left helpless in the power of his 
imagination. In the case of ' preliminary ' detention, 
an additional torture besets the victim under investi- 
gation ; he or she feels himself or herself in the posi- 
tion of a hunted beast, and strains every nerve not to be 
betrayed into injuring by a chance word some innocent 
person. Is it surprising, then, that cases of suicide 
and madness are so frequent among Russian political 
prisoners? The statistics on this subject are carefully 



THE OLD BASTILLE Sz 

withheld by the Eussian Government, but at times 
private effort brings to light a significant fragment of 
them. In the autumn of the year 1898, 150 political 
prisoners were known to have been immured in St. 
Petersburg (117 men and 33 women) ; of these, six 
persons were confined in the Hospital of St. Nicholas, 
which is an hospital for mental diseases. So that is what 
the " political inquiry " comes to : it drives 4 per cent, 
of the political suspects — mind you, suspects only, 
persons who may yet turn out to be innocent, even 
from the official point of view — into the madhouse." 

And still there are deeper depths to penetrate. 
Some of my readers may remember that one of the 
recent battues in the capital arose through the disturb- 
ance by the police and cossacks of a peaceful celebration 
of the anniversary of the death of a girl named Vetrova, 
whose right to fame lay in her mysterious disappearance 
and death in the fortress beside the Neva. I am in- 
debted to Mr. Felix Volkhovsky for a fuller statement 
of the facts of this tragic affair than has yet appeared 
in English. 

" Marie Vetrova was a student of the St. Petersburg 
higher educational courses for women, twenty-five years 
old. She was much liked by her fellow-students for 
her straightforward, energetic, and bright character. 
She was the daughter of a peasant woman in the South 
of Russia, her babyhood being spent in a tiny peasant 
cottage. While only five or six years of age, she was 
placed in an orphan's asylum. The matron, noticing 
the child's ability and brightness, helped her to enter 
the provincial middle school. From her fourteenth 
year, however, Miss Vetrova had to maintain herself by 
her own work, learning and coaching others at the same 
time. In 1888 she graduated and became a teacher in 
a primary school in the country. During this time she 



84 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

kept a diary, and from her notes one sees how earnestly 
and even painfully she strove after self-improvement, 
In 1890 she came upon Tolstoy's essay, 'What is 
happiness ? ' which made a great impression on her. 
She entered in her diary this remark : ' Yes, happiness 
consists in the fulfilment of Christ's teaching. Tolstoy 
is right, and I thank him for this truth ! Well, then, 
to live for others, that's it.' She began to read feverishly. 
Extracts and abstracts from Pisarev, Macaulay, Schopen- 
hauer, the great Russian critic Mikhailovsky, Herbert 
Spencer, Dobrolubov fill up the pages of her note-book. 
But she felt the need of more regular tuition, and all 
kinds of hindrances, put in her way as a teacher by 
official suspicion or unscrupulousness, were developing 
grave doubts as to whether her occupation really did 
any good, whether it meant ' living for others ' in the 
right sense. 

" At the same time heavy bereavements began to 
visit her. Two of her friends had been arrested ; in 
1893 a third was incarcerated — all of them on ' political' 
suspicion, of course. On what suspicion ? We do not 
know. We only know that neither in Lubeck nor in 
Azov, where Vetrova was successively a teacher till the 
year 1894, had any 'political affair' of any note 
happened at this time. The salaries of Russian ele- 
mentary teachers are beggarly. Their position is that 
of individuals whom every Jack-in-office, however insig- 
nificant be his position, may treat, and almost invariably 
does, with suspicion and contempt. Yet we do not find 
any complaints or invectives in the whole of Vetrova's 
diary. Only once does she write down a phrase which 
reveals at once the conditions in which she lived, and 
this is not in the form of an indictment of any one. She 
simply exclaims, ' It is horrible; soon I shall have 
nothing to eat ! ' Neither poverty, nor professional 



THE OLD BASTILLE 85 

work, nor personal trials quenched, however, her thirst 
for enlightenment; and, in 1894, we see her in St. 
Petersburg as a student of the higher educational 
courses. People who knew the deceased girl assert that 
she took no active part in what is known in Eussia as 
revolutionary work, but that she was a reader of 
clandestine literature, and did take part in helping the 
strikers in the summer of 1896. 

" She was, however, accused of having had some 
connection with a group of the ' Party of The People's 
Will' (Narodnaya Volya), whose secret printing-office 
was seized near St. Petersburg in July, 1896. On 
January^ 4, 1897, she was arrested and imprisoned in 
the House of Preliminary Detention, and in a month 
transferred to the fortress of St. Peter and St. Paul. 
What the reason of this removal of the prisoner was, no 
one knows. On January 18, or about that date, Marie's 
sister, who came expressly from the South to see her, 
was told by the gendarmes that no heavy punishment 
awaited the prisoner, and that she would be liberated 
soon. General Zvoliansky, the Director of the Police 
Department, speaking to Miss Vetrova's friend long 
after that removal, said the same, adding that the 
severest measure which threatened Marie was her being 
turned out from St. Petersburg and sent home to her 
mother's. So Vetrova's transfer to the fortress was not 
one of those measures of greater isolation or additional 
precaution against escape, which are usually thought 
necessary with regard to serious offenders. What was 
it, then? 

" Whatever it was, Miss Vetrova was kept in com- 
plete isolation till February 22, when, after a visit to 
her cell by the Assistant Procuror of the St. Petersburg 
Court of Appeal, Kichin (which visit lasted four hours, 
no witnesses being present), heart-rending shrieks were 



S6 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

heard from the cell. On February 24 Marie died ; 
nevertheless, a comrade of hers, to whom an interview 
had been promised, brought books and money for her, 
and both were accepted as if the prisoner were still 
alive. On March 10 this student was told that 
Miss Vetrova had no need of anything at all, but the 
fact of her death was still concealed. It was not until 
some of the other prisoners in the St. Petersburg 
fortress, who had heard the shrieks of Vetrova, were 
being transferred to the House of Preliminary Detention, 
that the fact that something awful had happened to 
the girl leaked out. Nothing definite was, however, yet 
known, and the authorities were very naturally besieged 
with questions, and began an ignoble play on the 
patience and credulity of the deceased's friends. The 
Commandant of the fortress would direct the inquirers 
to the head-quarters of the gendarmerie; that office 
would direct them to the Department of Police ; and 
the Director of that Department again to the Com- 
mandant. 

"At last, on March 12, Zvoliansky said to a friend 
of the deceased : ' An unfortunate accident befell poor 
Vetrova ; she poured (vylila, spilt, or poured) on her- 
self some burning kerosine oil from the lamp a few 
minutes after the gendarme who brought it left the 
cell. . . . She could not stand the extreme suffering, as 

the wounds on the body were too deep, and further ' 

Here the Director of the Police Department suddenly 
stopped his explanations. He made another pronounce- 
ment later on, when the rumours about the unfortunate 
girl having been the victim of a heinous crime by either 
Kichin or the gendarme reached him. ' Nothing of the 
kind ever happened/ protested Zvoliansky ; s but, of 
late, Vetrova was subject to hallucinations of having 
been violated.' At the same time, Prince Meschersky, 



THE OLD BASTILLE 87 

that unprincipled mouthpiece of certain spheres of 
Eussian officialdom, printed in his organ, Grazhdanin, 
a note about a girl-prisoner having committed suicide, 
'to which no clue can be found in the circumstances 
surrounding her/ 

" This is, in fact, all we know about this horror. 
Was it really suicide, or was it a partly abortive 
(because not sudden) murder, committed to conceal a 
still more godless crime ? If it was really an attempt 
at suicide from motives for which the authorities were 
not responsible, why did they not call some of her 
friends to her bedside during the two days which passed 
from the moment of the burning till death ? Instead 
of that, they used every device to conceal the very fact 
of their victim's death for full sixteen days, that is, 
until the mutilated body was already buried, and all 
traces that might lead to the explanation of the mystery 
effaced. They concealed the very burial-place of the 
unfortunate girl's remains ; so there was something to 
be concealed. Whether it was a matter of physical 
torture and insult (the deceased complained once to 
her sister that at the inquiries she was made to feel 
her social position as a peasant girl, and peasants are 
liable to being flogged), or whether it was a matter of 
fiendish lust — in any case, the very possibility of such 
lawlessness, of such cheapness of everything that is 
sacred to man, and the thought of the unbearable 
anguish which had led the girl to so atrocious a death, 
if it was suicide, makes one shiver with horror." 



CHAPTER VI 

ANNALS OF SCHLUSSELBURG 

Since the active period of the earlier revolutionary 
movement, many of the gravest political cases have 
been sent to the ancient and inaccessible castle-prison 
of Schlusselburg, forty miles away from the capital, on 
an island at the source of the Neva in Lake Ladoga. 
For long no voice ever reached the outer world from 
this place of living burial, for those incarcerated there 
are never allowed to see their relatives ; twice a year, 
through the intermediary of their guards, they are 
allowed to exchange a few colourless lines with their 
relations, no references to the prison being allowed ; 
and no money, food, or other articles can be received 
from outside. The very soldiers are themselves 
prisoners ; and with this gaol, alone among those 
of the Empire, the revolutionists have never been 
able to open secret communication. Thus Schlussel- 
burg is hardly mentioned in the books of Kropotkin, 
Stepniak, and Kennan. In 1897, however, of the 
twenty-four revolutionists then known to be immured 
there (many of whom had been there for fourteen 
years) eight were removed, three as insane, the rest 
to various far-removed places of exile ; another was 
removed in 1902, and three more last autumn; and 
on each occasion a little has been added to our know- 
ledge of the secrets of this horrible dungeon. Eleven 

88 



ANNALS OF SCHLUSSELBURG 89 

or twelve political prisoners, at least, still remained 
in December, 1904, one of these having been in the 
fortress for twenty-six years. 

Instead of attempting to describe the conditions that 
have prevailed, and now prevail, at Schlusselburg,* I 
will lay before the reader a very brief statement of the 
fifty-four cases some particulars of which I have 
obtained. Of these, two men were shot in the prison ; 
four committed suicide ; six were already, or became, 
insane, at least one of whom is dead ; twenty died 
otherwise in the fortress ; ten were removed into exile, 
of whom three have since committed suicide ; and 
twelve are believed to be still alive in confinement. 

In most of these cases, let me say at once, there was 
no question of a complete " miscarriage of justice" in 
the ordinary sense. True, there was generally no pre- 
tence of legality in the business of arrest, " trial," and 
sentence — had this elementary right existed, there 
would have been no such extremes in the revolutionary 
movement as are illustrated in this record. Most of 
these, however, were at least real revolutionists, and 
not purely accidental victims of the Tsardom, like 
Angela Karpouzi or Marie Vetrova. But they were 
political offenders, sacrificing themselves for a public 
ideal, and the tortures to which these educated and 
sensitive men and women were put are sufficiently 
indicated by the summary figures just given. 

The first of this appalling list of victims dates from 
the short terrorist period of the revolutionary move- 
ment of the later seventies and early eighties. Either 
in 1883 or shortly afterwards, Kolotkevich, Teterka, 
Telalov, Langhans, and Kletochnikov died in the hands 

* For the illegality of the imprisonment in some of the following cases, see 
the letter of P. Polivanov, addressed in 1903 to the then Minister of Justice, 
N. V. Muraviev, Times, August 21 ; Free Russia, October, 1903. 



9 o RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

of their gaolers, the last-named by deliberate starvation. 
Of these the first-named was condemned to death in 
April, 1882, in what was known as the "Trial of the 
Twenty." Teterka was one of the Tsaricides, and took 
part in one of the abortive attempts on the life of 
Alexander II. Nicholas Kletochnikov, famous as the 
" counter spy," was one of the ablest and most daring 
of the conspirators. For a long time he maintained his 
position as a copyist in the " Third Section " conveying 
the information of the secret police to his revolutionary 
colleagues. At length he was discovered, and was 
arrested on January 28, 1881, at the house of his 
friend Alexander Barannikov. The latter had been 
seized the day before, and died in Schlusselburg in 
1884. In the same year Alexander Mikhailov, one of 
the same group, and for several years the virtual leader 
of the party, died, and Ivan Uvachev became insane. 
The last-named was an ensign in the army, and was 
condemned, in the "Trial of the Fourteen," along 
with Baron von Stromberg and Lieutenant Rogachev, 
who were executed, Colonel Aschenbrenner, Captain 
Pohitonov, Second Lieutenant Alex. Tikhonovich, Vera 
Figner, and Ludmilla Volkenstein. In 1884 George 
Minokov, hoping thus to obtain permission to have 
books and tobacco, refused to take food, and, when 
fed by force, struck the prison doctor in the face. For 
this " breach of discipline " he was shot. In the same 
year Klimenko and the above-named Tikhonovich 
committed suicide by hanging. In 1885 Malavsky, 
Dolgushin, Boutsevich, and S. Zlatopolsky died. 
Dolgushin was one of the first of the revolutionary 
propagandists, and formed an active group, which 
became concerned in Degayev's conspiracy, and was 
extinguished by the police. Boutsevich, an Army 
officer, was arrested with Gratchevsky and Madame 



ANNALS OF SCHLUSSELBURG 91 

Korba in June, 1882, after the discovery of a dynamite 
laboratory in St. Petersburg by the famous detective, 
Sudyekin. Zlatopolsky was concerned at Odessa in 
one of the plots against Alexander II., was imprisoned 
in the fortress of SS. Peter and Paul, removed to the 
Kara mines in 1883 to serve twenty years' penal 
servitude, and brought back thence to Schlussel- 
burg. 

At this point the record is affected by a backwash 
from the great stream of Siberian exile that reached its 
height about this time. Hypolite Myshkin was one of 
the most extraordinary figures of the " Nihilist " move- 
ment, a man whose adventures would alone fill a 
substantial volume. His bold attempt to rescue Tcher- 
nichevsky from his place of exile in Siberia has been 
narrated by Mr. Kennan. After three years awaiting 
trial in the Trubetskoy ravelin of the St. Petersburg 
fortress, he was at last brought up, in October, 1878, in 
the "Trial of the 193," of which something is said in a 
later chapter. He was first sent to the Kharkov central 
prison, then to hard labour in the Kara mines. In April, 
1882, with a companion, he escaped from the Kara 
prison * and succeeded in reaching Vladivostok, over 
1000 miles away, but was recaptured and brought back 
in handcuffs and leg-fetters. He was one of the victims 
of the unprovoked and ruffianly attack on the inmates 
of the Kara political prison on May 11, 1882. On 
July 6, eight other " politicals," regarded as specially 
dangerous — Malavsky (named above) and Hellis, Koby- 
liansky, Boutsinsky, Voloshenko, Paul Orloff, Pop off, 
and Shchedrin — were sent back from Kara, and im- 
prisoned in Schlusselburg. Myshkin followed these in 
the following year. In the autumn of 1885, believing 
that he was on the verge of insanity, and in the hope 

* Kennan : " Siberia and the Exile System," ii. pp. 229-233, etc. 



92 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

either that he might receive public trial or that he 
might at once be put out of his agony, he struck one 
of the prison warders. He was then promptly court- 
martialled and shot. In 1886 the above-named Koby- 
liansky and Hellis died in the fortress. Mr. Kennan 
met the wife of the latter during his Siberian journey, 
and found that she had been refused a last interview 
with her husband on his leaving Kara, and did not 
know what had become of him, even whether he was 
alive or dead. Shchedrin, who, as Mme, Kovalsky 
narrates in a later chapter, was brought to Schlusselburg 
from Kara still chained to his wheel-barrow, became 
insane during this year ; and there also died Nemolovsky, 
Issayev, and Alexander Ivanov. 

In 1887 Mikhail Grachevsky struck the prison 
doctor, and, this proving ineffectual, refused to take 
food for twenty days, becoming insane. At length he 
poured the oil from the lamp of his cell on his bed, lay 
on it, deliberately set fire to it, and was burned to 
death. Formerly a railway mechanic, he had become 
one of the best known figures in the revolutionary 
movement. He was arrested on suspicion as a propa- 
gandist in 1875, suffered over two years of "preventive 
detention," and when at last brought to trial was 
acquitted. Turning again to his occupation of railway 
mechanic, he was again arrested at Odessa, without 
having committed any fresh offence, and exiled by 
administrative order to Pinyega in the extreme north. 
It was an experience like this that turned many 
innocent missionaries of the vague socialism then 
prevalent into determined revolutionists. After a year 
of exile, in September, 1879, Grachevsky decided to 
attempt an escape, braving the dangers of the hundreds 
of miles of virgin forest which lay between him and the 
struggle for liberty that he was now determined fully 



ANNALS OF SCHLUSSELBURG 93 

to share. Compass in hand, he made his way with 
increasing difficulty, and at last, driven with hunger, 
ran into the hands of some village police. Soon he 
escaped again, however, and this time, after having 
hidden awhile in Archangel, he succeeded in reaching 
Moscow. In 1882 he was again arrested in St. Peters- 
burg, was tried and condemned to death, but the 
penalty was commuted to imprisonment for life in 
Schlusselburg. 

In 1888 Ury Boghdanovich and Aronchik, the 
latter after being paralyzed for four years, died in the 
fortress. In 1889 Ludwig Varinsky died, and Kona- 
shevich, one of the accused in the Sudyekin trial of two 
years earlier, became insane. In 1891 Boutsinsky, one of 
the Kara convicts, died, and one of the most striking of 
the many striking women I shall have to name took her 
life after only six months' detention. 

Sophia Ginsburg was one of the later terrorists. 
Dynamite, as we shall see presently, played but a 
small part for a short period in the movement of revolt 
of which the more characteristic, and in the long run 
more effective, weapon was the secret press. In the 
autumn of 1884, and again in 1886, dynamite factories 
were discovered on Kussian soil, and in 1887 an abor- 
tive attempt was made upon the life of Alexander III. 
on his way to the Petropavlovsk Cathedral to celebrate 
the anniversary of the death of his father. This was 
followed by the making of more perfect missiles, first in 
Zurich, where the chief artisan killed himself in the 
process, and afterwards in Paris. It was in connection 
with this conspiracy, on the strength of " evidence " 
obtained in Paris by the French police — the immediate 
charge, however, being that of helping to draw up a 
revolutionary proclamation — that Sophia Ginsburg was 
arrested, secretly tried in November, 1890, along with 



94 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

four other Russians — Stoinovsky, Freifeld, Dunshevsky 
and Crotchko — and, with the first two of these, con- 
demned to death, while many others were seized and 
exiled without pretence of trial. " She is a girl of rare 
beauty, keen mind, careful education, and amazing 
enthusiasm," said one of the foreign correspondents, " all 
of which she sacrificed gladly to the cause of enlightening 
the poor and ignorant of her native land." The case of 
this girl of only twenty-one years old attracted much 
attention abroad, and meetings were held to petition 
for a modification of the sentence both in England and 
the United States, where ex -Presidents Cleveland and 
Hayes, the Mayor of New York and Governor of the 
State, Bishop Potter, and other well-known people gave 
their names to the effort. Bethinking them of the effect 
on the mind of the world of the execution of Sophia 
Perovsky, and perhaps in the hope of thus obtaining 
further information of the revolutionary organization, 
the Government committed Miss Ginsburg for life to 
Schlusselburg, where she killed herself with a blunt 
pair of scissors. " This young girl," wrote Stepniak, 
" was the creator and the inspirer of the society which 
collapsed so pitiably after she was arrested. Old people, 
broken down with disappointment and doubt, in contact 
with her forgot their scepticism, and, fired with her 
ardent faith, once more believed in those ideals of their 
youth which they had laid aside as empty dreams. 
Even her enemies bear witness to her tenderness of 
heart and her capacity for strong personal affection. 
Her self-inflicted death is in itself a proof of her care 
for others as well as of her courage. The inquiry has 
brought to light her acquaintance with an unknown 
man of good social position, formerly a revolutionist. 
It was he who wrote, at her request, the revolutionary 
proclamation which was the only material charge 





D. KOGACHEY 



TUTCHEV. 





VOIXAEALSKY. 



ADRIAN MIKHAILOV. 





BAKON STKOMBERG. 



STEPHANOVITCH. 



ANNALS OF SCHLUSSELBURG 95 

against her and her companions. No one ever saw this 
man ; no one knew his name except Sophia, who absolutely 
refused to disclose it. But the Kussian police will go 
to a great length to extort a secret of such importance. 
Sophia was not tortured ; we are fully convinced of this. 
But besides acute physical torture there is moral torture, 
which is sometimes as effective, the torture of repeated 
interrogations, of threatening, cajoling, and harassing 
by disciplinary punishments. Few can stand this for 
long, and she was in the hands of her tormentors for 
life, with the burden of her fatal secret, terrified lest in 
sleep, in illness, in a fit of insanity, it might escape her. 
How many more of these martyrs of duty must follow 
her ? " 

In 1895 another Schlusselburg prisoner went mad — 
Captain Pohitonov, one of those condemned in the 
" Trial of Fourteen." An exceptional case was that of 
Alexander Lagovsky, who, having escaped from exile 
in Siberia, was remitted to Schlusselburg by simple 
" administrative ^order." In the following year, how- 
ever, he was deported to Central Asia. In 1896 Yur- 
kovsky, one of the Kara group, died in the fortress. 
During that or the following year five of the prisoners 
remaining were removed — Mme. Ludmilla Volkenstein 
to Sakhalin, and four men — Surovtsev, Martinov, She- 
balin, and Yanovich — to the desolate north of the 
province of Yakutsk. Shebalin, condemned to penal 
servitude in Siberia with his wife for being found in 
possession of a secret printing-press, had been transferred 
from Moscow prison to Schlusselburg for a " breach of 
discipline " in resisting the shaving and fettering opera- 
tion, which was usually deferred till the convicts reached 
a Siberian prison. " His young wife had scarcely parted 
from her husband when her child, an unweaned infant 
whom she had with her in prison, fell ill and died. She 



96 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

herself succumbed to her grief and died in the Moscow 
prison." * 

Whether the above-named Martinov is the same 
whose pitiful story is told by Mr. Kennan (ii. 407) I do 
not know ; but it is known that both he and Yanovich 
committed suicide in their place of exile. " We have 
repeatedly depicted the physical and mental hardships 
of exile life in those arctic regions," Felix Volkhovsky 
wrote in Free Russia on their removal. "There the 
struggle for a bare existence is hard enough even for a 
native savage, a Yakut, or Tunguz, who is trained to 
itj who has not got those mental and physical wants 
which are originated by culture. What must it be, then, 
to men whose vital forces have been systematically 
drained out of them by eleven, twelve, fourteen years 
of seclusion, inactivity, artificial surroundings, and con- 
stant trial of their nerves, not to count the effect of 
their ' preliminary detention/ ' These sad words were 
indeed prophetic. 

There were now known to remain in the castle- 
prison fifteen or sixteen " politicals," all of them 
sentenced for life, except Pankratiev, a comrade of 
Shebalin, and Trigoni, who was the most favourably 
situated, having only six years to serve after having 
been interned for fourteen years. Among the others were 
Mikhail Popov, one of the Kara group (he still survived 
in 1902); Morosov, imprisoned in 1880; Frolenko, 
Aschenbrenner, Vasil Ivanov, Vera Figner, Lopatin, 
Lukashevich, Novorusky, Antonov, S. Ivanov, and 
Starodvorsky. Among these are some of the most 
famous of the revolutionists of the last generation. 
Nicholas Lopatin, for instance, was first arrested in 
1866, and exiled to Siberia, whence he escaped. In 
1884 he was again arrested, tried in June, 1887, 

* Leo Deutsch, " Sixteen Years in Siberia " (1903), p. 121. 



ANNALS OF SCHLUSSELBURG 97 

and sent to Schlusselburg for life. Starodvorsky was 
the assassin of the great spy, Sudyekin. To the 
number of those just named has since been added 
P. Y. Karpovich, who shot the Minister of Education, 
Bogolyepov, in 1902. 

For some time nothing more was heard from Schlus- 
selburg. At length, in 1902, Peter S. Polivanov, 
condemned to death in 1882 by a military court for an 
attempt to liberate the revolutionist Novitsky from 
the Saratov prison, and immured first in the Petropav- 
lovsk fortress, and then in Schlusselburg, was removed 
to a place of exile in the wilderness of Yakutsk. He 
at once determined to escape, and with the aid of 
friends and a small sum voted by the Society of Friends 
of Kussian Freedom, after various adventures, succeeded 
in reaching Switzerland and France, to be received by 
comrades of a new generation with open arms. A story 
based on his prison experiences, which may be published 
posthumously, gives some faint impression of what the 
past twenty years had meant for him. Mentally he 
was still active and determined, but physically he was 
at the end of his resources, and, as a friend wrote, " the 
more fully life took possession of him, the more merci- 
lessly he realized that he was no longer fit for life." 
On August 17, 1903, he shot himself in a garden at 
Lorient, leaving a letter to his friends in which he said : 
" May you live to see the moment when the Autocracy 
that disgraces our country falls, and with it the evil 
it caused will come to an end. How much I wish to 
take part in the heroic fight for freedom, a fight not by 
means of speech only, but by deeds as well. But I am 
ruined physically. To live idle, outside the struggle, I 
cannot, and so I put an end to my life. Long live 
Liberty ! Long live the Organization of Combat ! " 

Finally, in November, 1904, Schlusselburg gave up 

H 



98 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

three more of its victims — Mme Figner-Philipova, Col. 
Aschenbrenner, and Vasil Ivanov. The first-named, 
who entered the castle as a beautiful girl, is described on 
leaving it, after twenty years of solitary confinement, 
as " a bowed and trembling old woman, suffering from 
rheumatism and scurvy, so frequently induced by 
Russian prison life, and from the pitiful complaint 
known as ' agoraphobia,' the fear of open spaces. ,, * It 
is stated that the late M. Plehve refused to release her 
at the proper time, two years earlier, on the ground 
that it would be " a danger to the State, there being 
still too much life in her." Papers written by her in 
the fortress were burned. From Schlusselburg she was 
taken to the Petropavlovsk fortress, and thence to the 
town of Archangel, to be detained in the town prison 
till the roads were in a condition to permit of her being 
taken to a remote village in the same province, designed 
for her place of exile. 

Vera Figner, to use her better-known maiden name, 
comes, like several of her former comrades in the 
revolutionary movement, of the old nobility of Russia, 
and her grandfather was a distinguished general in the 
Napoleonic campaign. Born in the province of Kazan, 
and educated for a brilliant position in society, she was 
too intelligent and sympathetic to ignore the troubles 
of her poorer countrymen, and the disappointment of 
the reaction that followed the short epoch of reforms 
under Alexander II. But her first ideas were only to 
educate herself more really, and to help others to gain 
the education which was necessary to any true happiness 
and progress. In 1872, with her elder sister, she went 
to Zurich to study there, more advantageously than was 
possible at home, the natural sciences ; and there she 
came into contact with the individualist-peasantists 

* Free Russia, Dec, 1904; also La Tribune Busse, Nos. 22, 23. 





N. LOP A TIN. 



VERA FIGNER. 





HYPOLITE MYSHK1N. 



N. SHCHEDEIN. 





DOLGUSHIN. 



P. S. POL1VANOV. 



ANNALS OF SCHLUSSELBURG 99 

grouped round Bakunin, and the Marxian propagandists 
who regarded Peter Lavrov as their teacher and his 
review Vpered {Forward I) as their organ. Sectarian 
contentions did not appeal to this fine-minded and 
practical woman, but when her sister Lydia was 
arrested, along with Sophia Bardina and other mission- 
aries of a mild radicalism whom she had met, and cast 
into prison ; when she witnessed the agony of these gentle 
and self-sacrificing souls, immured for three or four 
years before being brought to trial, and then punished 
with a ruthless severity, the appeal of humanity to her 
very human heart became too strong to be longer 
resisted. Still, however, she only joined a secret bene- 
volent society, the so-called Political Eed Cross, whose 
object was to provide such small succour as was possible 
to the political offenders with whom every jail in the 
land was being crowded. Means were not lacking, for 
Kussian society has never grudged indirect help to the 
revolutionists, if its open co-operation has been little 
and uncertain ; but the collection of funds had to be 
carried on secretly, and yet on a large scale. This 
lasted through 1875 and 1876, and then, after having, in 
the following year, accompanied her sister to Siberia, 
she definitely joined the revolutionary movement, but 
still only in its innocent apostolate " to the people." 
Having passed the necessary examinations, she sought 
employment in the country as a medical assistant with 
the object of carrying on clandestinely the forbidden 
attempt to teach the workmen and peasants the elements 
of scientific and political knowledge. Soon she was 
obliged to evade the police, so becoming illegal, and 
frequently to change her residence. In 1879 she 
joined the " Zemlya i Volya " (" Land and Liberty ") 
group, and took part in the famous Voronezh congress, 
where, with a few others, she attempted to reconcile the 
LclC. 



ioo RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

harried " propagandists " and the new " terrorist " 
section. When division became inevitable, however, 
this gentlewoman, who had lived for four years with in- 
creasing resolution amid scenes of suffering unparalleled 
in modern history, gave her young life to the party of 
combat, the Narodnaya Volya (the People's Will). For 
four years — the years in which one after another of the 
revolutionary leaders, Dubrovin, Ossinsky, Brantner, 
Sviridenko, Soloviov, Lizogoub, Sophia Perovsky, were 
brought to the scaffold — she worked with an extra- 
ordinary vigour and capacity. The indictment in the 
trial of September 25-28, 1883, represented her as an 
accomplice in all the attempts on the life of Alexander 
II. ; but she was peculiarly successful in obtaining 
recruits in the ranks of the army. She was at length 
betrayed to Sudyekin by the renegade Degayev, and 
went to her doom, as has been said, " like a living incar- 
nation of the Eevolution, beautiful like its ideal, sure 
of herself like a conqueror, and accusing her judges like 
their own conscience." 

Will she live to see the victory of the cause for 
which she has suffered so much ? It may be. 



CHAPTER YII 

SIBERIAN EXILE AS IT IS 

Siberian exile, for the outer world the familiar type of 
all the horrors of human misrule, has been abolished, 
not once, but many times in recent years — by British 
journalists, who until lately have been only too ready 
to accept Imperial decrees and official explanations at 
their face value, and to retail with optimistic com- 
mentaries official projects that were doomed, even if 
they were not intended, to disappear after serving this 
trivial purpose. In Eussia " clemency manifestoes " and 
promises of minor reforms are concocted from time to 
time, mainly for the benefit of the peasantry ; among 
the educated classes, these many years, they have been 
received with icy scepticism. Any remaining hopes 
were disposed of at the outset of the present reign. 
Nicholas II. was young and reputedly gentle ; his 
German wife would surely influence him toward mercy 
and progress. When, as Tsarevich, he visited Siberia, 
he was believed to have personally inspected the con- 
dition of the political exiles. He really did and could 
do nothing of the kind, for the politicals were carefully 
removed or put out of sight before his passage. Since 
there must be a coronation manifesto, however — even 
Alexander III., who ascended the throne after the 
murder of his father, could not avoid this traditional 
solatium — it was commonly expected that two leading 

IOI 



102 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

and notorious scandals of Russian life must be wiped 
out. These were corporal punishment and " administra- 
tive" imprisonment and exile. On the first subject 
a campaign of protest had been lately waged, under the 
leadership of Count Tolstoy, with the sympathy of all 
non-official sections of society. The discovery that 
neither of these evils was to be touched, nor the police 
and prison administration, nor the censorship, nor the 
clerical inquisition, quenched the faint hope of better 
times under Nicholas II. , and the revival of political 
conspiracy began in earnest. 

Some important changes have been made in the 
interval, but whether on the whole they leave the 
punitive system better or worse than it was when 
Mr. Kennan made his journey of discovery, it is im- 
possible to say. The chief modifications date back to 
the ukaz of June 10-23, 1900, the object of which was 
stated to be " to take off Siberia the heavy burden 
imposed upon her as a country into which depraved 
people have been poured for centuries." This project 
was promptly hailed as closing one of the blackest 
chapters in Russian history ; and a well-known British 
weekly illustrated paper, not to be outdone by the 
solemn leader-writers of the day, printed two photo- 
graphic illustrations, boldly headed " The last exiles 
that will ever go to Siberia," with comments by a 
writer who, having spent eight days in the train 
between Irkutsk and Moscow, had actually seen the 
party in question, and so knew all about it ! Yet, 
as a table in a later chapter shows, more persons were 
deported to Siberia in 1903 than for many years past, 
and in that year — three years after the "abolition" 
ukaz — 470 "politicals" alone were received at the prison 
of Krasnoyarsk, Eastern Siberia, between April and 
October, two-fifths of these being "intellectuals" and 




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SIBERIAN EXILE AS IT IS ioi 



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one-sixth women.* Such is the obstinate trustfulness 
of human nature that Mr. Volkhovsky, who has suffered 
enough at the hands of the Tsars — in and out of 
Siberia — to justify the extremest scepticism, wrote a 
comparatively optimistic account of this decree,f to 
which I am here indebted. 

The general operation of " administrative order," 
that is, punishment on suspicion, or at least without 
trial, has been explained. Exile was, and remains, of 
four kinds, two of these — exile by sentence of regular 
courts, and by decision of the mir 9 in cases of peasants 
and " unprivileged " townsmen only — applying mainly 
to criminal offences ; and the other two — administrative 
exile by order of the Minister of the Interior, with or 
without the co-operation of the Minister of Justice, and 
administrative expulsion by a Governor-General under 
the " state of siege " rules — applying mainly to political 
and religious offences. The declared intention of the 
decree of 1900 was in all these cases to reduce the 
amount of exile by substituting for it imprisonment ; 
to transfer the remaining quantum of exile to the 
island of Sakhalin or to the remote European provinces, 
such as Archangel, Olonetz, Vologda, Viatka, and to 
limit the right of the mir to banish its members, this 
matter being placed under the control of local police 
officers and marshals of nobility, who have thus a new 
and dangerous power. I shall show in the next chapter 
that Sakhalin in some ways eclipses the worst records 
of the older convict settlements ; and the conditions of 
the remoter European provinces are very much like 
those of the remoter Siberian districts, with which I 
shall presently deal. The rest of the programme could 

* Posledniya Isvyestiya, the news circular of the Russian Jewish Socialist 
Labour organization, the Bund, April, 1904. 
f Free Bussia, October, 1900. 



104 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

only be carried out in part, because prison accommoda- 
tion was already insufficient to meet an increasing 
demand. In so far as it has been carried out, the over- 
crowding, which was one of the worst features of the 
prison regime, has been aggravated. As compared with 
the milder exile sentences, which ended in a period of 
colonization under police surveillance, imprisonment with 
hard labour, and in the case of persons of " unprivileged 
birth " with liability to flogging and other disciplinary 
punishments, simply means a certain increase of the 
severity of penalties with a possible decrease of the 
period of punishment. Moreover, many of these prisons 
are in Siberia — that is to say, are thousands of miles 
away from the great cities where, though free discussion 
is forbidden, facts do leak out and a certain public 
opinion does exist. What this may mean, two or three 
instances must serve to indicate. In December, 1903, 
Colonel Foss, governor of the prison of Ekaterinburg, 
was brought to trial and sentenced to three years' 
penal servitude for embezzlement, forgery, and cruelty 
to prisoners. It was shown that he had established 
systematic torture, some prisoners being flogged to 
death, and others going mad. In September, 1902, 
some particulars were allowed to appear in the Siberian 
press showing a shocking state of affairs in the great 
central prison of Alexandrovsk. During service in the 
prison church, one of the convicts begged the priest to 
make a personal inquiry, and it was found that prisoners 
were kept caged up on trivial pretexts for lengthy 
periods, that the insanitary conditions had caused out- 
breaks of disease, that complaints were punished, and 
that the brutality of the warders had led to a " hunger 
strike'' on a large scale. In July, 1901, N. Makhov, 
a Kharkov weaver, exiled administratively for five years 
to the province of Yeniseysk, was unduly detained in 



SIBERIAN EXILE AS IT IS 105 

the local prison of Achinsk, and, on making complaint, 
was visited by the director, who beat him cruelly and 
repeatedly about the head and body.* 

During the summer of 1900, Mr. Henry Norman, 
M.P., went as far as Irkutsk by the Siberian railway, 
and while there visited the city prison. " Its official 
accommodation," he wrote in a letter to the Daily 
Chronicle, " is for 700 prisoners, but there were 1024 
within its walls on the day of my visit." The greater 
number of these were either awaiting trial after a " pre- 
liminary examination," or were awaiting transference to 
Sakhalin, to the prison of Alexandrovsk, forty miles 
away, or to other places. " Four wards did I enter, 
seeing, perhaps, 600 prisoners of all ages, from youths 
to very old men, of all the nationalities which Eussia 
contains, and charged with all the crimes in the code. 
Every one of these prisoners was awaiting trial, and I 
was told that many of them would be there as long as 
two years." Mr. Norman has said many a too kind 
word for the Eussian Government, but he confesses that 
" the faces of these men, from wild beast to vacant 
idiot, haunted me for days." 

Official statistics show an average inflow of exiles 
into Siberia during the twelve years, 1887-99, of 
rather more than 7000 persons yearly. While the 
number of criminal exiles tended to decrease from this 
point onwards, the number of " politicals " greatly 
increased until the outbreak of the Japanese war. The 
stream was then temporarily diverted to Archangel and 
other northern districts. " Since the war commenced," 
writes an exile, to La Tribune Russe (September 26, 
1904), "the north of European Eussia has become the 
place for the isolation of the ' revolutionary microbe. ' 
There are now about 70,000 of us in the four or five 

* Free Bussia, November, 1901, where Makhov's letter is printed. 



106 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

northern provinces; in some parts the number of 
political exiles is equal to that of the native population. 
Our existence is dreadful from the material point of 
view. Exiles belonging to the higher classes receive 
only twelve roubles per month each, while those of the 
lower classes get but half tbat sum. Since this far- 
distant and sparsely peopled country has been thus 
invaded the prices of food and other necessaries has 
risen proportionately, so we are subject to all manner of 
privations." Many of those subjected to these condi- 
tions are workmen and peasants ; but many are men 
and women of the professional classes, students, doctors, 
members of zemstvos, and teachers. As though nature 
were not hard enough, the lot of these is made more 
intolerable by official limitation of the occupations by 
which they may add to the miserable pittance allowed 
to them by the Government. And let it always be 
remembered that most of these offenders have never 
been tried, that often no definite charge has been made 
against them, and that arrests and punishment by sheer 
mistake frequently occur. 

Yet their case is still a happy one as compared with 
the unfortunates who are relegated to the newer exile 
places in the extreme north and east of Siberia, designed 
by the diabolic genius of Plehve and his assistants. 
The ukaz of 1900 promised the abolition of Siberian 
exile — unless new districts should be chosen for penal 
settlement ! New districts were chosen, as far away 
from civilization as any spot that could be found on the 
land-surface of the globe, as far away from the capital 
as the Zambesi is from London, or Samoa from New 
York, but, instead of those happy skies, amid the desert 
tundras and marshes of the Arctic circle, otherwise 
inhabited only by a few savage hunters and fishermen. 
Most of these places lie in the provinces of Yeniseysk and 



SIBERIAN EXILE AS IT IS 107 

Yakutsk, which stretch right across the far north of 
Asia from the Gulf of Obi nearly as far east as the 
peninsula of Kamtchatka. In the former and smaller 
province the reader will find on reference to a large map 
the tiny town of Turukhansk within 500 miles of the 
mouth of the Yenisey River, and as far north of the 
town of Yenisey sk, which in turn is 200 miles north of 
Achinsk on the Siberian railway. Far away eastward 
again, in 130° E., on the river Lena, lies Yakutsk, an 
outpost town, the local life of which, if existence in such 
a place can be called life, is necessarily at the mercy of 
the governor and the police. From this point exiles are 
distributed yet further north, to such places as Vilyuisk 
(122° K, 63° 45' N.) — -where a special prison was built 
for the survivors of the Yakutsk massacre of 1889 — 
Shigansk, Krasnoye, and Verkoyansk, just inside the 
Arctic circle, and finally to Yakut villages on the 
Kolyma river, especially Sredne Kolymsk, and Nijni 
Kolymsk, the latter on the coast of the Arctic Ocean. 

I cannot hope to give any idea of what banishment 
to these regions means, especially to men and women of 
gentle breeding and poor physique. They must live in 
the squalid yurtas — huts built of rough logs rilled in 
with mud and turf — of natives with whom they cannot 
exchange more than a few words. Coarse black bread, 
tea, petroleum, are luxuries. Letters and journals can 
reach them, if at all, only at long intervals. Doctors 
and nurses are thousands of miles away ; the only 
possible relief of the fearful monotony is an occasional 
visit to or from some other unfortunate ; and so, to the 
struggle to keep alive, is added a no less desperate 
struggle to preserve health and sanity. In the warm 
season these districts are so plagued with insects that 
travelling in many parts is impossible, and the exile 
parties always come and go in winter. In Verkoyansk 



108 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

the average temperature for the year is only 1° F. 
above zero, and in the three winter months it sinks to 
thirteen degrees below the freezing-point of mercury. 
Even in Yakutsk, the capital of the province, the mean 
annual temperature is only 14° F., and reference to an 
isothermal map will show that this is the average for 
the northern coast of Spitzbergen, the centre of Green- 
land, and the northern coast of Hudson's Bay. 

In course of his journey across Siberia to America 
by the Behring Strait, in 1902, Mr. Harry de Windt, 
another witness who cannot be suspected of unfriend- 
liness to the Eussian Government, visited Sredne 
Kolymsk, and wrote that he was " absolutely astounded " 
at what he saw. The conditions of the settlement were 
so appalling that " quite fifty per cent, of the exiles die 
raving mad, either from the solitude or the character of 
their surroundings, and from the fact that they never 
know whether their sentence of banishment will not be 
suddenly extended. Of the many suicides which take 
place, there were four in a settlement of twenty people 
within two years, and they almost always occur shortly 
before their expected release. A doctor at Sredne 
Kolymsk, himself an exile, told me that in the Arctic 
settlements every woman over thirty years of age suffers 
from an hysterical form of insanity, which is dreaded 
more than death. Only a few weeks before I reached 
Sredne Kolymsk, a political prisoner blew out his brains 
after being flogged by the chief of police, who was him- 
self shot dead the next day by a friend of the exile." 
That this, if an extreme, is by no means a solitary 
instance, may be gathered from the fact that among the 
" politicals " of the province of Yakutsk, in the first four 
months of 1904, there were three cases of madness, two 
attempts at suicide, three suicides, and seven other 
deaths. Kara in its worst period could not show such 



SIBERIAN EXILE AS IT IS 109 

a record as this. Nor are these facts at all new. 
Political offenders have been exiled to these parts for 
twenty years past ; and in his " King Log and King 
Stork" (1896), Stepniak gave a number of cases of 
insanity and suicide among them. 

A single trustworthy narrative will give a better 
impression of the reality of Siberian exile to-day than 
many statistics ; and so, setting aside other but 
generally more fragmentary evidence, I will content 
myself by reciting as briefly as possible the life-story of 
a man whose good fortune it has been to escape from 
this inferno during the last few months, and to reach 
England sound in body and mind, young in years and 
spirit, though old in struggle and suffering, a poor 
alien, if you please, and an escaped convict, yet one of 
the soldiers of liberty and democracy to whom free 
men in happier lands than his own should be glad to 
pay their tribute of respect. Mr. Mark Broido is of the 
third exile generation — if such a division may be in- 
vented in an army wherein active service rarely lasts for 
more than ten years — that I have known ; and he is no 
unworthy successor of the veterans of the Narodnaya 
Volya, no unworthy spokesman of the youth who 
throughout Russia to-day are raising the standard of 
revolt. An engineer by profession, cultured and refined, 
he has sacrificed every material prospect in the effort to 
help the dumb masses of his people to win their freedom ; 
and many as I have been fortunate enough to know of 
his predecessors in this great contest, none perhaps has 
made upon me a deeper impression of high-mindedness 
and devotion. How Mr. Broido became a revolutionist 
I shall tell in his own words in a later chapter. He 
was arrested in St. Petersburg in February, 1901, after 
the discovery of a secret printing-office which he 
had helped to establish, and after long preliminary 



no RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

confinement, without any form of trial, was packed off to 
Eastern Siberia, there to await the announcement of his 
precise sentence. This was delivered long afterward — 
eight years of exile in the province of Yakutsk. 

The exile road is no longer as Kennan saw and 
described it. It was said, at the time of the ukaz of 
1900, that the building of the Trans-Siberian line 
logically involved, and even necessitated, the abolition 
of the old penal system ; and this was true so far as 
regards the narrow strip of land through which the line 
runs. In a word, the sphere of punishment has been 
pushed away into the wilderness. The Kara political 
prison was closed soon after the horrible events of 1889, 
the prisoners being transferred to Akatui, Nerchinsk, 
Sakhalin, or Yakutsk. The central prison of Alexan- 
drovsk has swallowed larger and larger numbers of 
offenders ; new prisons have been built in Irkutsk and 
other towns ; for the rest the barren and illimitable North 
has been resorted to. Convict parties now go for the 
greater part of their journey not on foot by the old 
post-road, but by railway — the single considerable 
improvement yet effected. Sometimes they go direct 
as far as Krasnoyarsk, but most often both politicals 
and criminals are moved on from place to place — from 
St. Petersburg to Moscow, thence to Samara, thence to 
Tobolsk — staying at each prison for a new party to be 
made up. 

Beyond Alexandrovsk, the general distributing 
centre, the familiar evils of the etape system are still 
experienced — filthy lock-ups, capricious and brutal 
gaolers and convoy offleers, bad food, a degrading 
promiscuity — and, indeed, they are often aggravated 
by the fact that less distinction is made than formerly 
between "politicals" and ordinary criminals. The 
party in which Mr. Broido, his wife, and their two 



SIBERIAN EXILE AS IT IS m 

children were numbered, after having reached Krasnoy- 
arsk from St. Petersburg in ten days, and spent two 
months there, arrived at Irkutsk by train ; and then 
began their real hardships, the tale of which would be 
well-nigh incredible if, plentiful corroboration apart, 
there were not precedents for every episode of purpose- 
less suffering. From Irkutsk they travelled for several 
hundred miles in rough peasant carts, and then a longer 
distance down river by pausoJc* making regular stops 
at small wayside lock-ups. " I shall never forget," says 
Mr. Broido, " the horrible impression of our first halting- 
place. It was a dirty low-roofed room, feebly lighted 
by grated windows, and with no furniture but the 
sleeping-planks which stood »out from the walls, leaving 
only a narrow passage between. "We were so astonished 
and disgusted that we stood speechless in the doorway ; 
but the children quickly accommodated themselves to 
these strange conditions, jumping on to the benches, 
and playing innocently among the ordinary prisoners. 
There was no separation of men's and women's quarters, 
but the ' politicals ' kept together, and managed to make 
a screen of sheets." On the land journey from thirty 
to forty miles a day was covered, and every third day 
the party stayed to rest. By river the speed was better, 
and the travelling, at least for the " politicals," who 
were allowed on the roof-deck, more comfortable. At 
length the small town of Kirensk, on the Lena, 150 
miles from the northern end of Lake Baikal, was 
reached ; and here Broido was located for ten months, 
being permitted to engage himself as assistant to an 
engineer. 

That such men so situated do not sink into apathy 
and abject obedience to the nearest policeman is a fact 

* A large flat-bottomed barge, a sort of floating house of one storey, 
earned down by the stream without motive power. 



ii2 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

for which I shall not offer any apology. The oligarchy 
cannot imprison all its enemies, and it adopts the 
method of exile, not because it may be more merciful, 
but because it is cheaper and less troublesome. I have 
said enough of life in these regions to make it clear that 
it is only tolerable, or, rather, it is only possible, if 
reasonable liberty of intercourse among the exile groups 
be allowed. But this may and does lead to occasional 
escapes or attempts to escape. A Government deserving 
the name, if it can be imagined face to face with such 
a problem, would attack it resolutely and radically. 
Under the Tsardom no social problem is attacked in 
that way. M. Plehve, still alive and in power in the 
spring of 1903, was, however, a master of petty 
expedients in tyranny, and it is to his action, through 
Count Kutaysov, Governor-General of Irkutsk, that the 
tragic events now to be briefly recited were due.* In 
future, special measures were to be taken to prevent 
unauthorized journeys by exiles, rigid surveillance being 
instituted, daily reports made, all exiles' correspondence 
read, and perquisitions made on the slightest suspicion. 
The police were warned that they had not been doing 
their duty, and that any lack of zeal in future would 
be promptly punished. They did not need further 
urging. 

Attached to Count Kutaysov's circular was a form 
which the political exiles were summoned to sign. 
Regarding the threat to punish unauthorized absence 
with banishment to the Arctic circle as illegal, they 
refused to do so. Broido was one of them, and along 
with twenty-five others, all " politicals," he was ordered 
to be deported to Mjni Ilymsk, a village of two or three 

* Count Kutaysov's " absolutely secret " circular to the authorities of 
Eastern Siberia was summarized in the Times of December 25, 1903, and its 
full text was given in L'Europeen of December 19, 1903. 



SIBERIAN EXILE AS IT IS 113 

hundred inhabitants, a thousand miles from Kirensk. 
This meant, in the first place, a steamer journey of 250 
miles down the Lena, and then a series of stages by 
open boats on smaller rivers. Though it was yet 
summer, the nights were bitterly cold, the boat was 
often buried in fog, and the wretched huts in which the 
halts were made were infested by insects. At last the 
mountain-chain of Ilymsk was crossed in peasants' 
carts, and one more journey was over. But now there 
was to be another surprise from the inexhaustible tragi- 
comic repertory of the oligarchy. Three days after 
their arrival Broido and his family were ordered by 
telegraph to return to Kirensk, there to join a party of 
politicals who were to be deported to Yakutsk. No 
reason was given ; it was only when this further double 
journey of over 2000 miles was completed that its object 
was explained. The exact sentence for Broido's original 
offence had only just arrived from St. Petersburg, and 
this superseded all intermediate penalties ! To the 
women and children especially this weary itinerary was 
full of extreme hardship. The year was creeping on ; 
food was bad and insufficient ; they had no money but 
the official allowance of fourpence a day ; the children 
fell ill with whooping-cough. 

On the second part of the journey there was added 
to the misery of cold, wet, and hunger, the torment of 
a cruel officer. But though Broido's party were ill- 
treated, they came off better than another party who 
passed over the same route a few weeks before, with 
some members of which (including the M. Lurie, who 
appears with him in one of our photographs) he was 
afterwards to be acquainted. In that case, the convoy 
officer, Sikorsky, made repeated attempts to outrage a 
woman prisoner ; and, after provoking a conflict in 
which several men and one woman were wounded, he 

I 



ii4 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

was at length shot by a political named Minsky, a 
soldier at the same time killing a prisoner named 
Schatz.* 

On September 6, 1903, Broido reached Yakutsk, and 
learned that, not content with any moderate interpre- 
tation of the sentence of eight years of exile in Eastern 
Siberia, Count Kutaysov had determined to send him 
to the furthest possible point — Kolymsk — over a thou- 
sand miles away on the Arctic Ocean. There he might 
be to-day but for a further incident, this time an utterly 
unrelieved tragedy. 

In the early spring of last year an address was sent 
to M. Plehve by a number of exiles in Yakutsk, which 
contained the following passages : — 

" The burdensome conditions of life for political exiles in the 
Yakutsk province have been made so much worse during recent 
years by a series of Gov.-General Kutaysov's circulars, that 
it is no longer possible to endure them. The exiles, usually 
badly clad, are, as a rule, despatched from the local prisons of 
European Kussia on the shortest notice ; they are prevented — 
under the possible penalty of being mercilessly beaten by the 
escort — from communicating on their way out with any of their 
already exiled comrades, who/in their turn, are threatened with 
further exile to the remotest places for such an ' offence/ Thus 
the exiled are deprived of any opportunity of providing them- 
selves with things necessary for the journey, and the foundation 
of continuous friction between the exiled and the officials, as 

* Details of this affray will be found in Free Russia for November, 1904, 
and La Tribune Busse for August 20, 1904, where the names of the twenty- 
eight exiles are given. This affray was no new thing. On June 18, 1898, a 
gang of 206 prisoners, eleven of them politicals, left the Alexandrovsk for- 
warding prison for Irkutsk by etape under one Captain Bassarba. This man 
exhibited a fiendish temper not only to the convicts, but to the soldiers of 
the convoy. At last a protest was raised, on which the officer ordered a 
volley to be fired among the prisoners, three of whom were killed. In an 
article reprinted by the Novoye Vremya, the Siberian Messenger attributed 
the incident to sudden insanity on the part of Bassarba (Free Russia, January, 
1899). 



SIBERIAN EXILE AS IT IS 115 

well as brutal ill-treatment of the former, is laid. By the 
circulars the town of Yakutsk is excluded from the list of 
places of exile, and persons who have long lived there in 
banishment in virtue of permits, are being expelled. They 
are sent to the wildest country, where there are neither any 
dwellings to be got, nor medical assistance, nor any necessaries 
of life. The circulars mentioned are not necessitated by any 
real circumstances, at any rate so far as the Yakutsk province 
is concerned. The journeys of the exiles from their respective 
places of installation cannot be frequent, if for no other reason 
than because their purses are so light. Escapes, even if we 
admit their possibility, cannot be hindered by the prohibition 
of such journeys. Quite recently our comrades who have com- 
pleted their term of exile have been confronted with a new act 
of persecution on the part of the Yakutsk administration : the 
latter has declined to send them back to their respective homes 
at the expense of the Government; only after a great many 
protests and negotiations has the administration consented to 
send them away at the expense of the local rural population, 
always giving warning that this will be the last time. This 
converts our exile into a trap from which there is no escape for 
the majority of us. Therefore we request that those who have 
concluded their term of exile should be reinstated at their 
respective homes at Government expense; that the latest 
' circulars concerning visiting of places outside the respective 
points of exile, the administrative disciplinary punishments for 
the breach of the rules endorsed under police supervision, and 
the prohibition to prisoners sent into exile to see outsiders on 
their journey should be repealed." 

I might quote, in illustration of this statement of 
grievances, individual cases of cruel punishment of 
trifling offences, such as that of an exiled student, 
Se vinson, who, while undergoing the last months of his 
sentence, was banished to Verkhoyansk for having met 
a passing party of " politicals ; " and having on his way 
thither entered the town of Yakutsk to make some 
purchases, contrary to the terms of the new circular, 
was arrested and deported still further to Nijni Kolymsk. 



n6 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

In the middle of February, 1904, the party of twenty- 
three iC politicals " alluded to above in connection with 
the barbarities of the officer Sikorsky, reached Yakutsk, 
and at the same time Plehve's order that henceforth 
exiles must return to Russia, if at all, at their own 
expense became known. The system of surveillance and 
the undisguised hostility of the Governor-General had 
cut these unfortunate men and women off from the 
world that might have helped them, and, driven at 
length to despair, they determined upon an act of open 
rebellion. There was no need to seek for a model. 
On this very ground took place what became known 
throughout the world as the Yakutsk Massacre of March 
22, 1899, when thirty-five exiles, awaiting removal to 
the Arctic settlements under unusually inhuman con- 
ditions, declined to leave a house in which they were 
gathered, and were fusiladed by a body of troops, six 
being killed outright and twenty -two wounded.* Even 
if the present generation of " politicals" had not known 
of that butchery, there were others in the town who 
remembered it, including its author, one Olesov, then 
and still an officer of police in Yakutsk ; and by a 
strange turn of events this Olesov was to now be one 
of the chief instigators of a new battue. 

On March 2, 1904, forty-one political exiles, of 
whom Broido was one of the leaders and spokesman, 
shut themselves up in a house hired for the purpose, 
barricaded all the entrances, and sent word to the 
Acting Governor of the town that they would not come 
out till the "circulars," which were illegal and which 
made life impossible, were withdrawn. At first the 
Acting Governor was humanely disposed, and allowed 

* " King Log and King Stork," vol. ii. ch. 3, and " The Slaughter of 
Political Prisoners in Russia," a pamphlet issued by the Society of Friends 
of Russian Freedom in 1890. 



THE BESIEGED EXILES IN YAKUTSK (MARCH, l'JOl). 




1. Tessler. 2. Tepiov. 3. Perasitz. 4. M. Broido. 
5. M. Lurie. 6. Kurnatovsky. 




S. Komay. M. Broido. Eve Broido. S. Fried. 



SIBERIAN EXILE AS IT IS 117 

the exiles to send to M. Plebve the telegram quoted 
above. Then, under pressure of the police, and probably 
also of the central Government, he suddenly took stern 
measures. On March 17 the house was first fired on, 
one of the besieged, George Matlakhov, being killed, 
and four (Kostushko, Medyanik, Khatskelevich, and 
Kabinovich) wounded. After this the exiles fired back 
and killed one soldier. On the 20th this new " Fort 
Chabrol " capitulated ; and, after five months in prison, 
on August 12, fifty-five persons implicated (most of whom 
had originally been members of either the Social Demo- 
cratic Labour Party or the Union of Jewish workmen, 
"the Bund"), one of them a woman, were put on trial 
with closed doors. After ten days' sittings, during which 
they were ably defended by two well-known Eussian 
barristers, MM. Bernstam and Zarudny, the prisoners 
were condemned and sentenced under sections 263 & 
268 of the Penal Code to twelve years' imprisonment 
each — a total of 660 years — while Dr. L. L. Nikiforof, 
as a former military officer, was sentenced to one year in 
a disciplinary battalion, and three others were acquitted. 
The fact that a steamer had been chartered to convey 
them to prison a month before the trial began indicated 
that the sentence was predetermined. 

The condemned, who included M. Broido, M. V. 
Lurie, G. S. Lurie, L. V. Tesler, P. F. Teplov, and 
F. L. Fried, were now conveyed to the central convict 
prison of Alexandrovsk, and it is significant that during 
this journey of several weeks they were not prevented 
from seeing their friends and relatives in the places 
through which they passed. Broido's wife and children 
were allowed to accompany the party, and it was 
arranged between them that, if he could escape, she 
would make her way as soon as possible to European 
Eussia and then abroad. One evening, when the convoy 



u8 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

was within twenty-five miles of its destination, profiting 
by a moment of confusion, Broido took his life in his 
hands and slipped through the line of the escort into 
the dead darkness. After tramping without rest for 
twenty-four hours through muddy country, he reached 
the Angara River and succeeded in boarding a passing 
steamer. In Irkutsk he was hidden by friends who, 
when it was comparatively safe, set him upon his 
journey provided with sufficient means to reach Eng- 
land. When I first saw him in London in January 
last, his wife had already joined him. I wondered as 
we talked whether the gain of freedom is any compen- 
sation for the loss of fatherland. But now, looking back 
over their story, I forget all the suffering here typified 
in a sense of the sheer stupidity of a system under 
which armies of police, gaolers, and other officials are 
maintained in order to inflict useless torment upon a 
man who has helped to establish a printing-office. 



CHAPTER VIII 



Russia's "ile du diable" 



Although — a dozen decrees and a thousand journalistic 
statements to the contrary notwithstanding — Siberian 
exile has not been abolished, it has been modified by a 
diversion of large parts of the stream of " unfortunates " 
to other destinations, especially the large and deso- 
late island of Sakhalin, in the North Pacific ocean. 
Eussians, like others, waxed indignant over the cruel 
fate of Dreyfus, but here was a Devil's Island on a 
thousandfold larger scale, and hardly a word of protest 
was heard. 

It is about fifty years since Sakhalin was occupied, 
thirty-five years since the first batch of convicts was 
sent there, and twenty -five since deportation on a large 
scale began. In 1884, so large had the business already 
become that a Governor with a full executive staff was 
appointed from St. Petersburg, the island being divided 
into three administrative districts. In the same year 
women were first deported to Sakhalin. At first the 
convict parties were sent overland, and the greater part 
of the way on foot — an incredible journey of between 
four and five thousand miles ; and cases are on record 
of men who survived this journey, escaped from prison 
after it, and made their way right across Siberia to 
European Kussia, only to be captured there and sent 
back again. Very soon, however, land transport was 

119 



120 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

abandoned, and the convicts were shipped in periodical 
batches by steamers of the so-called Volunteer Fleet 
(Dobrovolny Flott), via Odessa and the Suez Canal. 
The wretched conditions of this traffic drew much 
public attention in the early eighties ; but afterwards 
a better type of vessel was built. Some years ago the 
report that one of these prison ships — fitted with cages 
for the prisoners, and a hose arrangement by which 
they can be boiled alive with steam in case of mutiny — 
was being built on the Clyde, roused a good deal of 
feeling in England and Scotland. One of these vessels 
carried eight hundred prisoners 'tween decks, of whom 
only twenty were allowed on deck at a time in fine 
weather. 

Exile to Sakhalin, like exile to Siberia before it, had 
in the eyes of the Eussian Government three objects. 
The first, of course, was to get rid of real criminals and 
those inconvenient people to the oligarchy, the worst 
kind of criminals — political agitators. The second was 
the profitable working of the coal mines of the island. 
The third was agricultural colonization. The first of 
these ends has been so completely achieved that a man 
or a woman deported to this hermetically sealed island 
is lost to the world. In its second object the Tsar's 
Government has been less successful, for the coal is of 
poor quality, convict labour is not cheap, and markets 
are far distant. In the third object it has completely 
failed. The idea of free colonization was abandoned in 
1886, when a number of families, who had been sent 
out at the expense of the Government seventeen years 
before, abandoned the attempt to live by agriculture on 
the island, and migrated to the mainland. The truth 
was admitted by the Eussian Government — perhaps 
unwittingly — in the following passage in a report on 
" Siberia and the Siberian Kailway," published in 



RUSSIA'S "ILE DU DIABLE" 121 

English for the Chicago Exhibition : " In what un- 
favourable climatic conditions, notwithstanding a com- 
paratively not very northerly situation, the island is 
placed, thanks to the current flowing down from the 
bleak Okhotsk Sea along the eastern littoral, bringing 
with it huge masses of ice, is evident. The mean 
temperature in the principal settlement of the island, 
Due, is 0*5 degree. The mean temperature of the five 
months' vegetative period, less than 12 degrees, is insuf- 
ficient for the development here of permanent agri- 
culture. ... In a word, Sakhalin is unfit for agricultural 
colonization." This meant the abandonment of the one 
humane feature of exile at the older Siberian penal 
colonies. 

The fact is that the island, except for a few weeks 
of uncertain midsummer sunshine, is ice-bound and fog- 
bound ; the climate is harsh ; even in June the hills are 
covered with snow, and the soil is frozen twenty inches 
deep ; dwarf forests cover the mountains, and the 
valleys, with few exceptions, are narrow and marshy ; 
roads are made and kept with great difficulty ; there 
are no good harbours. The hovels of the few settlers 
who try to make a living out of the icy soil are 
depicted by Dr. Tchekhov as being like the dens of wild 
beasts. The whole population depends upon Government 
allowances of food. 

A few years ago news reached London, through 
Odessa, from Eastern Siberia that so terrible a state of 
affairs was prevalent on the island that the Governor 
had had to interfere for the protection of prisoners 
against minor prison officers. A number of convicts 
were stated to have deliberately maimed themselves in 
order to get free of certain cruel warders. " Others 
fled into the impenetrable forest " — so the message 
ran — " where they suffered all the horrors of hunger. 



122 



RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 



In a satchel belonging to a fugitive convict who had 
been hunted down were found some pieces of human 
flesh, and other cases of cannibalism have been reported." 




CONVICTS CHAINED TO WHEELBARROWS, SAKHALIN". 

Such escapes are sometimes successful — -the convicts 
getting across the narrow strip of sea to the mainland 
in a stolen boat or on a rough raft ; but more frequently 
the wretched fellows are captured by the savage natives 
— Gilyaks or Ainos, who receive a regular reward from 
the Government — or are drowned or die of starvation. 



RUSSIA'S "ILE DU DIABLE" 123 



v> 



There is more than one well-attested story of cannibalism 
on Sakhalin. 

It must be remembered in every aspect of the 
Eussian penal system that those who have been tried 
and those who have had no trial, burly ruffians and 
delicate victims of culture and conscience, the murderer, 
the gentle sectary, and the political propagandist, men, 
women, and mere children, are treated under it almost 
indiscriminately. By decree issued on March 8, 1888, 
by Mr. Galkin Vraskoy, head of the General Prison 
Administration, to the Governor of Sakhalin, corporal 
punishment was reimposed in the case of political 
offenders, men or women. Already there had been a 
general Siberian order (the text of which is given by 
Mr. George Kennan in his book on " Siberia and the 
Exile System") removing the privileges of " politicals," 
and putting them upon the same basis, women and all, 
with ordinary convicts. In this later order it was 
more specifically stated that " no difference must be 
admitted " between the political offender and the com- 
mon malefactor ; " flogging and the plet must be 
allowed." 

Russian feeling in regard to the flogging of " poli- 
ticals " is historically embodied in the verdict of the 
St. Petersburg jury which acquitted Vera Zassulitch 
after the shooting of General Trepov in 1877. But in 
Sakhalin, as in Kara, there was no public opinion, and 
reprisals are impossible. For eleven years there was no 
case of such punishment ; but the gaolers were only 
waiting for permission. In July, 1888, a political exile 
named Volnov, having been struck by an official whom 
he did not know, had the bad taste to return the blow. 
Twenty of his companions waited on the " district 
commander " to intercede for him. The whole band 
were punished in various ways, while two of their 



124 



RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 



spokesmen, Tomashevsky and Maizhner, were sentenced 
to thirty, and Volnov himself to forty, strokes of the 
rod. The others were forced to witness the process of 
whipping. One of them wrote : " You will ask, why 
have we not protested by fighting to the death and let 




RIVETING FETTEES IN A SAKHALIN PKISON. 



ourselves be killed rather than submit to the outrage ? 
It was impossible. We were chained hand and foot, 
and each of us was surrounded by a body of soldiers. 
Before the execution of the sentence we were kept 
separated, and knew nothing of each other. Perhaps 
you will ask how we can live after undergoing such 
ignominy. To this question I will answer by silence." 
Silence long brooded over the Eussian He du Diable, 



RUSSIA'S "ILE DU DIABLE" 125 

only an occasional shriek of agony, as it were, piercing 
to the outside world. But gradually in the last few 
years a series of revelations and criticisms have found 
their way into the Eussian press. First, Dr. Tchekhov's 
report of "cruel corporal punishments" escaped the 
censor, and then in 1900, under the guise of cold 
history, an account of the flogging of convicts, with 
illustrations (three of which I have copied) by a former 
exile, Mr. Mirolubov, appeared in the Russian Historical 
Review. Even Mr. Harry de Windt's supply of white- 
wash gave out in Sakhalin. In the account of his 
visit to the island he speaks of punishment by the 
birch and plet (a horrible loaded whip), by chaining to 
a wheelbarrow, and imprisonment in special penitentiary 
cells ; and he mentions a prisoner who for a whole year 
was kept waiting for execution. The discipline of the 
two chief gaols he describes as " extremely severe, far 
more so than in any Siberian prison," punishment by 
the "plet" as "a terribly severe one, worse even than 
the now abolished ' knout.' ' A second attempt to 
escape is generally punished by being chained for a 
year to a wheelbarrow, "a terrible and much-dreaded" 
sentence. ' 

In the Eussian weekly Vrach (The Physician), 
No. 93, 1901, "A Sakhalin Surgeon" declared that a 
woman enceinte had recently been flogged, and that 
others in the same condition were not infrequently sent 
to the most remote and deserted parts of the island, 
where there was no possibility whatever of obtaining 
medical help. After this it is not impossible to believe 
statements recently printed in the newspapers of the 
Amur province of Eastern Siberia — papers which had 
certainly no object in manufacturing such news, and 
that have presumably passed the local, if not the central, 
censorship. The Pri Amur ski Vyedomosti described 



126 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

the head of one of the chief prisons as " a demon 
who for fourteen years had abused his office by his 
barbarous ill-treatment of the prisoners of both sexes 
under his charge." Every day, it stated, some convicts 
in the island were barbarously flogged, women, old 
and young, being beaten with whips and fists, or kicked, 
often with no cause whatever. Another prison chief, 
who struck a convict insensible, and had him dragged 
to his cell at the end of a lasso, for some trivial fault, 
was mentioned by the Amursky Kray. Perhaps the 
thing most calculated to shock readers strange to the 
subject is a reference to the system of compulsory 
" marriage " of convicts. " On the arrival of a party 
of female deportees from European Russia, the single 
women are assembled in a large barrack-room. The 
bachelor convicts are then admitted in turn to choose 
their wives, and the couples are forthwith married." 
This has been only too fully confirmed. 

A Commission appointed in 1901, under the chair- 
manship of Senator and Privy Councillor N. E. 
Shmeman, to consider the reorganization of the 
Sakhalin penal administration,* had before it evidence 
of mismanagement, not only from such an expert as the 
jurist and criminalist, D. A. Drill,f but also from the 
Governor- General of the Amour District, the Military 
Governor of Sakhalin, and P. A. Salomon, Mr. Galkin 
Vraskoy's successor at the head of the General Prison 

* For fuller details, see two articles by the able and well-informed Etissian 
writer, Vasily Zhook, on " The Truth about Sakhalin," in Free Russia for 
January and February, 1902. 

+ Mr. Drill reached the Alexandrovsky prison just at the time when the 
assistant-governor was punishing a convict by flogging, and, to his astonish- 
ment, found that the reason of this penalty was that the prisoner had refused 
to carry out the same sentence on another convict, and that it was the second 
time he had been flogged for such refusal ! Nearly two thousand convicts in 
this prison had refused to discharge this duty, and it had apparently been 
thought necessary to make an example. 




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RUSSIA'S "ILE DU DIABLE" 127 

Board. Some of this evidence had, indeed, been pub- 
lished in the Prison Messenger and other official journals. 
It was proved not only that great administrative blunders 
had been made, but that the moral and social condition 
of the colony was indescribably bad, drinking, gambling, 
and the worst vices being rampant. 

The latest detailed statistics I have obtained are for 
1897, when there were on the island 4979 hard-labour 
convicts (755 being women), 1566 released convicts 
(293 being women), 6934 exiles (879 being women), 
a total of 13,479, or nearly a half of the Russian 
population of the island. To this numerical disparity 
of sexes — aggravated by the facts that there is no 
separate prison for the women, and that the troops 
have no families with them — Mr. Salomon attributes 
the worst evils lately revealed. Not only is the fact 
of a wholesale " marriage " system officially confirmed, 
but it is shown that a whole train of depravity follows 
from it. " The so-called concubines," says Mr. Salomon, 
" that is, the exiled women 'who are given to the settlers 
to help them, and for the management of their house- 
holds, consider themselves as having the right freely to 
dispose of themselves, and they leave their partners if 
the latter try to prevent them admitting outside visitors. 
Usually, however, this is not the case, as the cohabitants 
share all their earnings." I cannot better Mr. Zhook's 
comment upon this appalling statement : " Under such 
circumstances, what can be their moral position ? Can 
one reproach these unfortunates with their moral down- 
fall, reaching even cynicism, when illegal cohabitation 
has become actually legalized? However guilty a 
woman sentenced to hard labour may be, nevertheless 
she does not cease to be a living being, not devoid of 
every sort of spiritual impulse. Deprived of ' all civil 
rights,' she loses by law the right to have a family ; but 



128 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

it is impossible to deprive her of tlie right to feel disgust 
towards the forced cohabitation, and, once she forsakes 
her ' master/ there is no other way open to her but to 
settle down with another one. This, indeed, is that 
'hard labour' to which criminal women are subjected. 
Can one wonder at the depraving influence which the 
Sakhalin convict's life exercises on the free women who 
have voluntarily followed their exiled husbands ? Is it 
not natural that even the little children, seeing around 
them such depraving spectacles, become early familiar 
with all the negative sides of the life of the vicious of 
both sexes ? " 



CHAPTER IX 



THE BUDGET 



As a speaking summary of the state of a nation, there 
is nothing more eloquent than its budget. The Eussian 
Budget (I adopt the official designation) is a master- 
piece of suppressio veri and suggestio falsi, yet with all 
its faults of omission and commission it is so enlightening 
a document and so rich in interest that I am astonished 
whenever I come across one of the large and apparently 
popular class of books which pass by the mass of evidence 
here arrayed in favour of dubious gossip and superfluous 
declamation. Entertainment of that kind, even if it 
be sometimes vraisemblable and touched with the right 
feeling, can only end in producing a general scepticism 
as to the forces making for the liberation of the victims 
of the Tsardom. For the outer world as well as for 
Eussians themselves, it is less important to entertain a 
vague sympathy for suffering people than to understand 
at least the more important factors at work behind the 
Tsar, the Grand Dukes, the Ministers, the police, and 
the priests on the one hand, and the intellectual and 
working classes of the Empire on the other. And this 
understanding is not difficult. 

The "Eeport of the Minister of Finance to H.M. 
the Emperor on the Budget for 1905," printed in St. 
Petersburg, and issued to the world at the New Year, 
together with preceding Budget Statements, will afford 

129 K 



130 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

us a good starting-point in our inquiry. The latest 
volume savours a little, it is true, of the play of 
Hamlet minus the princely part, for it informs us 
at the outset that it " does not include the Estimates 
of the extraordinary expenditure to be incurred in 1905 
for carrying on the war with Japan." For our immediate 
purpose, however, this omission, of which something 
will have to be said later, is rather an advantage, since 
it leaves a comparatively normal record of the income 
and expenditure of the oligarchy, as they are officially 
represented to stand. The representation is not a very 
honest one, but it will serve to provide us with a broad 
outline of the activities of the State as reflected in its 
finances. For easier reading, in the statistics that follow 
I roughly convert the Russian figures at 1 rouble = 2 
shillings. The rouble is really worth about 2s. l^d. 

M. KokovtsofFs summary of his Estimates for 1905 
is as follows : — 

£ millions sterling 

Expenditure: Ordinary 191,606,557 

„ Extraordinary 7,856,868 



199,463,425 



Kevenue: Ordinary 197,704,562 

„ Extraordinary 275,000 

197,979,562 
From the Resources of the Treasury ... 1,483,863 

199,463,425 

Two preliminary observations may here be made. 
The first is that the mysterious " resources " or " free 
balances " of the Treasury, into which surpluses go and 
from which deficits are made up, are a sort of lucky 
bag of the Finance Minister, consisting of surplus 
receipts (due to systematic under- estimates), unspent 
sums, and other windfalls, made up to whatever is 
needed with slices out of loans. What is the whole 



THE BUDGET 131 

sum in the war-chest of the oligarchy it is impossible 
to say. In the last ten years the yearly tale of " free 
balances " has exceeded the amounts required to cover 
Budget deficits by considerably more than a hundred 
millions sterling. I know of no account showing the 
disposal of this sum; but the 1905 Budget statement 
at least proves the Finance Minister to have been more 
far-sighted than the Foreign Office and the War Office. 
At the beginning of 1904 the Treasury held, according 
to the Finance Minister, a " free balance, free from all 
obligations," of £15,660,000, a balance of cancelled votes 
of £14,830,000, and by the realization of Exchequer 
bills and Treasury bonds £43,200,000 ; giving, when 
certain deductions for special expenditure were made, 
the tremendous total of £71,740,000 available quite 
apart from Budget revenue, and within the unrestrained 
power of this Minister. With the aid of these "free 
balances, " and notwithstanding the drain for war pur- 
poses, the amount of gold stored away in the State 
bank and the Treasury was increased from £92 millions 
at the end of 1902, and £105 millions in 1903, to £123 
millions at the end of 1904. In the last year, however, 
the gold in circulation diminished from £78 to £68 
millions, and the paper issues increased from .£63 to 
£90 millions. No doubt the Government could have 
drawn in gold and given out notes still more freely; 
but that would have meant not only a general com- 
mercial scare, but receipt of taxes in depreciated paper 
currency while foreign creditors had to be paid in gold. 
A year in which the 4 per cent. Kente fell in London 
from 99 £ to 86| was no time for further currency 
adventures. While more loans could be raised, they 
were evidently the preferable expedient. 

In the second place, it has to be observed that the 
distinction between " ordinary " and " extraordinary " 



i 3 2 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

in the Budget is quite artificial and arbitrary, its real 
object being to disguise the conjuring with surpluses 
and deficits which M. Witte raised to a fine art, and the 
unremunerative character of the great system of State 
monopolies founded by M. Vishnegradsky and extended 
by M. Witte. The " extraordinary " items appear year 
after year — they have all the permanence of the u tem- 
porary state of siege" or the temporary anti-Semitic 
bye-laws ; but it is necessary that they should be set in 
a special category, so that his Imperial Majesty and the 
innocent French investor may, in the main body of the 
Budget, be pleased with the spectacle of a successful 
balance. How does the account look if we put its two 
parts together ? From 1889 to 1898 * the " ordinary " 
receipts and expenditure showed increasing surpluses, 
the total in the decade amounting to 775 million roubles. 
The " extraordinary " budget, on the other hand, showed 
an excess of expenditure amounting to just over 1000 
million roubles. f In these ten years, therefore, there 
was a total net deficit of 225 million roubles (£22^ 
millions). Looking next to the Budgets of the last 
decade, we find the following figures : — 

* " Bussia in the Nineteenth Century," pp. 785, 786. 

t Of 929 million roubles of extraordinary revenue, 759 millions came 
from loans and 109 millions from railway companies' repayments. Of 1930 
millions of extraordinary expenditure, 801 millions was on amortisement of 
loans, 789 millions on railways, and 196 millions on famine relief in 1891 
and 1892. 






THE BUDGET 



i33 



A Ten Years' Balance Sheet. 



(£ millions.) 



Ordinary. 


Extraordinary.i 




Revenue. 


Expenditure. 


Surplus. 


Revenue. 


Expenditure. 


Deficit. 


1896 

1897 

1898 

1899 

1900 

1901 

1902 

1903* .. 

1904* .. 

1905* .. 




136-9 
141-6 
158-5 
167-3 
170-4 
1799 
190-5 
189-7 
198-0 
197-7 


122-9 
129-9 
135-8 
146-8 
155-5 
166-5 
180-2 
188-0 
190-9 
191-6 


140 

11-7 

22-7 

20-5 

14-9 

13-4 

10-3 

1-7 

71 

61 


4-3 

4-2 

8-8 

17-9 

3-2 

16-4 

20-2 

0-2 

0-3 

03 


25-5 
196 
414 
31-9 
33-4 
20-9 
36-5 
19-1 
15-4 
7-8 


212 
154 
326 
14-0 
30-2 

45 
16-3 
18-9 
151 

7-5 


Ten years 




1730-5 


1608-1 


122-4 


758 


251-5 


175-7 



* From the Estimates. "* Extraordinary " receipts are now wholly loan 
moneys ; " extraordinary " expenditure relates wholly to railways. It must be 
remembered that the cost of the Japanese war is not here included. 



Comparing the two periods (though they slightly 
overlap), we see that the former total net deficit of <£22'5 
millions has in the last decade risen to £53*3 millions. 

The normal financial situation of the Empire before 
the war had, therefore, become steadily worse in time 
of peace, despite the fact (or perhaps because of it) that 
the last twist had been given to the tax-gathering 
machine. No wonder that the State plunges deeper 
and deeper into the mire of foreign indebtedness. The 
war has precipitated a crisis that was ultimately in- 
evitable, the character and outcome of which I shall 
discuss in a later chapter. 

The details of the 1905 Estimates may be summarized 
as follows, in the order of their importance : — 



134 



RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 



Revenue. 


£ millions. 


Expenditure. 


£ millions. 


Ordinary : — 

Royalties 

State properties 

Indirect taxes 

Direct taxes 

Duties 

Land redemption payments 
Repayments to Treasury, etc. 


592 
579 
39-9 
139 
10-5 
7-6 
83 


Ordinary : — 

Ministries : Communicatioi 
War ... 
Finance 

Public Debt 

Ministry of Marine 

„ Interior 

„ Justice 

„ Agriculture . 

„ Education 
Holy Synod.,. 
Imperial household 
Other and special ... 

Extraordinary : — 
On Siberian Railway 
Other railway expenditur 

and loans 


is 44-8 

36-7 

341 

30-3 

11-6 

10-8 

4-9 

4-7 

43 

2-8 

1-6 

9-5 




1977 


Extraordinary 


0-2 




1979 




191-6 


From resources of Treasury 
(i.e. deficit) 


1-5 


1-2 

e 

6-6 




199-4 


199-4 



On the side of revenue, the class called " Koyalties" 
consists to the extent of ^£52^ millions of revenue from 
the Government Spirit Monopoly, postal and telegraph 
revenue yielding only £6 millions. The State properties 
are, in the main, railways (£44 millions), forests coming 
next (£6 millions). By far the most important part of 
indirect taxation comes from Customs, which, however, 
in spite of an ultra-Protectionist tariff, yields only £22 
millions. Sugar excise brings in nearly £8 millions, 
tobacco licences and excise £4 J millions, and excises 
and licences on lighting oils and spirituous liquor each 
about £3 millions. Direct taxes in Russia contribute 
a comparatively small part of the State revenue, yet 
they are numerous and burdensome, falling on all sorts 
of properties and industrial occupations. The old poll- 
tax was abolished on the establishment of the system 
of peasant land redemption payments in 1886; and 
landed property, with personal estate added, only con- 
tributes £5 millions to the revenue. The various trading 



THE BUDGET 135 

and industrial licences, and taxes on commercial capital 
and interest, on the other hand, bring in £6§ millions, 
in addition to which there is a 5 per cent, tax on 
interest payable on State and private stock and on bank 
deposits, which yields less than £2 millions. "Duties" 
are chiefly by stamps (<£4§ millions), transfer of property 
(£2 millions), and passenger and other small taxes. The 
tax on passports, one of the nuisances of life under the 
oligarchy, now only brings in a paltry <£6, 5 00. There 
is no general income-tax in Kussia. In spite of the 
activity of the district police officers — whose pay is still 
to some extent dependent on their success in squeezing 
redemption payments out of the peasantry, although 
" the last cow " and a necessary minimum of farm tools 
are now, at least nominally, protected from seizure — 
these taxes realize only £7 or £8 millions yearly, 
and even so are a grievous burden upon the poorest 
part of the population. A million sterling less is ex- 
pected this year than last from this source. Not only 
are there great arrears, but the amount unpaid steadily 
increases, although the annual due was reduced in 1881, 
and arrears have been several times remitted or post- 
poned. Through the seventies, it averaged 30 million 
roubles a year, through the eighties 41 millions ; in the 
next decade it rose to over a hundred million roubles, 
and in 1903 112 million roubles was outstanding.* 
Nothing could more clearly prove the desperate poverty 
in which masses of the Kussian people are normally 

* "From the commencement of the period of redemption to January 
1, 1899, 9 '3 million peasant allotments, comprising together more than 33 
million deciatines (approximately 89 million acres) of good land, worth about 
895 millions of roubles, have been redeemed. Of this sum 185 million roubles 
had been paid at the reduced rates. The average redemption due in European 
Russia does not exceed lr. 20k, (28. Qd.) per (inhabitant, or 7r..20k. (15s.) per 
family of six persons" ("Russia at the End of the Nineteenth Century," 
p. 762). 



136 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

sunk than this failure to redeem the debt upon their 
homesteads. 

But, if the State has lost in one direction, it has got 
its pound of flesh in another. Out of the details just 
given one feature clearly emerges. The Budget exhibits 
its authors not as the regulators, ministers, and arbiters 
of the nation's business, but as a junta of property 
owners, loan-mongers, and drink-sellers, whose vast 
undertakings combine every possible evil that can be 
plausibly attributed to the most rigorous State socialism 
with a spirit utterly alien to any form of socialism — a 
secrecy, rapacity, and dishonesty unparalleled even in the 
annals of the American Trusts. Of the whole Budget 
receipts, one half is contributed by the sale of intoxi- 
cating liquor — a State monopoly that is gradually being 
extended over the whole Empire — and the State railways. 
Take away the value of drink, railways, forests, and 
customs from the total revenue, and a poor £70 millions 
remains — not enough to pay for the Army, Navy, and 
Debt services. Taxation as understood in constitutional 
countries is a trifling and inelastic part of the balance- 
sheet. The oligarchy might spend their income with 
exemplary wisdom, and it would yet remain against 
them that, to the extent of two-thirds, it comes from 
tainted sources, from corrupt and mischievous monopoly 
and speculation. 

Is there any sign of wisdom in expenditure ? As 
regards the Ministries of the Interior, Justice, and the 
Imperial Household, this question has been to some 
extent anticipated. The main items of the account will 
be considered in the chapters that follow on the Tariff, 
the Railways, Drink and Debt, and the Army. The 
Debt services cost £30 millions, of which £28*4 millions 
is for interest. Under the heading of the Ministry of 
Finance, there is a significant item of £4*7 millions for 



THE BUDGET 137 

pensions to functionaries. The cost of the " Imperial 
Household " must not be mistaken for the cost of the 
Tsar, who, as one of the greatest capitalists in the world, 
rises above the petty limitations of a Budget. In this 
class are included the maintenance not only of the 
Grand Ducal households, but of certain Imperial 
academies and theatres. Similarly, the Church is 
largely dependent on its own properties ; of the State 
grant, nearly half goes in maintaining Church schools. 
The Foreign Office costs only a little over half a million 
sterling yearly. The War Office spends over half a 
million on the maintenance of a separate corps of 
gendarmes. The Finance Ministry spends nearly a 
million pounds in subsidies to various public institu- 
tions, joint-stock companies, and nobility schools. 
Three-quarters of the expenses of the Ministry of the 
Interior relates to provincial administration. 



CHAPTER X 



DEBT AND DRINK 



The Russian Government is an adept in borrowing, and 
the State Debt, which rose from £500 millions in 1889 
to £700 millions at the beginning of 1904, had reached 
about £750 millions before the question of the cost of 
making peace with Japan had to be considered. The 
following figures are given in the Budget Statement for 
1903:— 

Growth op State Debt. 



(Millions of roubles.) 


January 1, 1889. 


January 1, 1904. 


General loans. 


Railway loans. 


Total. 


General loans. 


Railway loans. 


Total. 


3,629 


1,363 


4,992 


3,462 


3,189 


6,651 



Of course, this vast sum does not show the whole of the 
money that has been sunk in State business, for, during 
these sixteen years of peace, conditions have been favour- 
able for the reduction both of capital and interest, and 
repeated conversions have been effected. For the same 
reason the Budget charges for the service of the Debt 
do not adequately indicate how dangerously this 
system of trading and exploitation has grown. To-day 
the credit of the Tsardom is irreparably damaged, and 

13* 



DEBT AND DRINK 139 

the foreign investor has good ground to share the 
desire of the Kussian people that a more honest, stable, 
and liberal rule may speedily be established. Kussia 
has abundant natural resources, and the State owns 
large landed, mining, and other properties. The only 
thing its creditors need fear is the continuance, with the 
aid of further loans, of a hopeless struggle against the 
rising popular spirit which must involve great material 
losses, and may provoke a demand for repudiation. 

So far, the creditor gets his steady 4 or 5 per 
cent. ; but what of the native tax-payer ? Apart from 
the Treasury balances already referred to, which will be 
more than exhausted by the current costs of the war, 
what has official Kussia to show for the commitments 
covered by the above figures ? The official list of sums 
owing to the Treasury * is not very encouraging read- 
ing. On January 1, 1904, they amounted to 2,458 million 
roubles on capital account and 266 millions of arrears. 
Of this total of £272 millions — say £2 for every £5 the 
State itself owes — about one half (£136 millions) consists 
of peasant's land redemption dues, the whole of which 
will certainly never be recovered. Far afterwards, the 
next items are from railway companies (£54 millions) 
and by war indemnities (£42 millions). It is a melan- 
choly inventory : a network of railways which do not 
pay, the costliest of which never will pay, and — the 
' 'last cow" of the long-suffering mujik. 

In addition to these there is one part of the State- 
trading system which has paid from the outset, and now 
contributes largely to the revenue. Of the whole 
Budget receipts in 1904, one half was contributed by 
the sale of intoxicating liquor (£50 millions) and the 
State railways (£46 millions). But there is this radical 

* Reglement Definitif du Budget de l'Empire pour 1903. "Memoire 
Explicatif presente au Conseil de TEmpire," p. 76, etc. 



140 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

difference : while drink gave a profit for the year of 
£32 millions, railways gave a loss of £13^ millions. 
For 1905 wholesale retrenchment under the latter 
heading has been ordered, yet the best account the 
Minister of Finance can give is a reduction of expendi- 
ture to £50 millions, while receipts are estimated under 
various heads at £4 8 J millions, a loss of £1^ millions 
quite apart from war costs. But we have seen that 
about one half of the public Debt of the Empire is on 
railway account. Adding this share of the yearly 
interest, therefore, to the above figures, it will be seen 
that the real deficit on the railways was £27^ millions 
in 1904, and, all construction not urgently necessary 
having been stopped, £15 J millions in 1905, not counting 
war costs. 

From 1889, when the State owned only a quarter 
of the mileage, to 1902, when it owned three-quarters, 
and when the line to Port Arthur was opened, the 
railway system was extended from 16,500 to 36,000 
miles ; and, during this period, the Budgets showed a 
total excess of expenditure amounting to about £34 
millions, without including extraordinary expenditure 
on construction. Since then, the loss has rapidly in- 
creased. M. Witte has repeatedly claimed that, during 
the middle period of his administration, the years 
1895-9, a series of surpluses was earned by steady 
economies. The claim has apparently no solid base ; 
and it must be said, without entering upon the details 
of what has been matter of heated controversies, that 
M. Witte's statements on financial affairs have been 
frequently proved to be disingenuous and untrustworthy. 
More recently, however, he has himself posed as an 
economist and a critic of the prodigal expenditures on 
strategic lines. This is the great pit into which the 
moneys borrowed from Western Europe or wrung out 



DEBT AND DRINK 141 

of the poverty-stricken peasantry have been thrown. 
The whole system is, indeed, open to grave objection. 
Russia needs railways, and the unification of the tariffs, 
which has proceeded along with State purchase, has 
been a great advantage. But an oligarchic State cannot 
make an honest and efficient proprietor or operator of 
great commercial undertakings ; and, even if it had 
exhibited in this instance honesty and efficiency, it has 
ignored the first need of the country during this period 
— that of stern economy and moderation in the extension 
of its business machinery. The fever of railway build- 
ing has, within living memory, inflicted great loss upon 
free and wealthy America ; in poor and enslaved Russia 
its consequences have been much more serious. In this 
case, too, there has been some detrimental influence 
upon existing means of water transit and transport, 
which should rather have been encouraged. 

When we pass from the area where some hope of 
commercial advantage can be entertained, however, and 
consider that most of the new expenditure in recent 
years has been on military lines which cannot sub- 
stantially contribute to the wealth of the country and 
are likely always to work at a loss, we realize the logic 
of oligarchic capitalism. The Siberian line, with its 
Manchurian branches, extended to about 5,500 miles — 
about one-seventh of the whole State system — and had 
cost, up to 1902, about £85 millions. At the outbreak 
of the war it had probably already realized M. Witte's 
expectation that it would cost over one hundred millions 
sterling, or about one-seventh of the public Debt of the 
Empire, by the time the line round Lake Baikal was 
constructed. A few years ago, this undertaking was 
advertised to the world as a supreme embodiment of 
autocratic wisdom. M. Witte, who now again poses as 
an economist and a reformer, travelled to Dalny in 



H2 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

1902, and set the note for a new chorus of gratulation. 
Englishmen who ought to have known better helped 
to glorify it as a material achievement and an agency 
of civilization. Globe-trotters who only learned of the 
massacre of Blagovestchensk after they had enjoyed 
the hospitality of the authors of that battue, and 
who could hardly be expected to understand the needs 
of the peasantry, or even of trade and commerce, 
solemnly discussed the latest traffic statistics or the 
inexorable demand for an outlet to the warm water. 
Recent events relieve me of the obligation to discuss 
these topics. The Japanese have cut off the head of 
this monster which, conceived in greed and born in cor- 
ruption, had devoured too many humble lives before 
the final crime of the war was added to the account. 
The iron mammoth of Siberia, the great pet of Nicholas 
II., even more distinctly than the new Navy, which, also, 
I need not discuss because its first trial has proved 
fatal, is typical of his reign, typical of gigantic waste, 
venality, and selfishness in a hundred directions. To- 
day, the ghostly fingers of thousands of exiles, dead on 
the highway of sorrow, are pointed in scorn at the 
unhappy youth who thought he could keep the forces 
of nature and humanity alike bound to the wheels of 
his conquering chariot. 

But his Imperial Majesty may still boast that he is, 
among other not wholly admirable things, the biggest 
publican in the world. Liquor, at any rate, yields the 
oligarchy a handsome profit. In its whole Budget, in 
fact, drink and debt are the only conspicuously expansive 
items. The former brings in to the State more than 
the whole normal cost of the Army and Navy in time 
of peace (men are cheap in Holy Russia !), with the 
Orthodox Church and the Grand Ducal households 
thrown in. This might be tolerable if the ideas 



DEBT AND DRINK 143 

which Messrs. Eowntree and Sherwell have so ad- 
mirably enunciated in England had any hold upon 
the Cabinet of St. Petersburg. Some small pretence 
is, indeed, made of subsidizing popular entertainments 
out of the profits of the drink traffic ; but for the 
Finance Minister to attempt really to use the largest 
item of his income for its own extinction would be 
plain suicide. What on earth would the oligarchy do 
if the mujik were suddenly to turn teetotaler ? 



CHAPTER XI 

THE TARIFF 

Here, then, is the Imperial train — a modern engine 
driven by a Witte, before an iron- clad Pullman car, 
whose occupants quake and quarrel behind drawn 
blinds, and in the rear an ancient brake guarded by a 
Plehve or a Trepov. It is a formidable concern just so 
long as it preserves the sanctity of Juggernaut. Once 
seen as it really is, no army of police, no lines of 
soldiery, can protect it. 

M. Witte's record in the domain of financial and 
commercial administration is well known, and I shall 
deal only with its results, which, though of fundamental 
importance, are little understood outside his own country. 
Three years younger than the rival officer whom he has 
survived, and, like him, of billable German origin, he 
has been successively Director of Railways, Minister of 
Ways and Communications, Minister of Finance, and 
President of the Committee of Ministers, this last post 
being the solatium given him in 1903 when his ten 
years' control of the finances of the Empire was brought 
to an end through Plehve's influence. He has constantly 
posed, and has often been complacently accepted in this 
country, as a Liberal, a rather absurd misnomer. His 
huge transactions, most of them mischievous, burden- 
some, and perilous in a high degree, would have been 
utterly impossible in a State even mildly democratic. 

144 



THE TARIFF 145 

He is, of course, no policeman and no cleric ; but we 
shall see that the man who provides ways and means 
for the auto -bureaucracy, however specious his methods 
— or rather just because of his resourcefulness and 
enterprise in this respect — is as dangerous an enemy of 
the people as the mere policeman or priestly inquisitor. 
He is the enemy of the people no less because, in the 
end, he proves the destruction of his partners and 
employers. The ancient brake may become unwork- 
able ; it can be dropped. If the engine runs away, 
leaves the line, or explodes, the Imperial train is done 
for. Steam is a good servant, a bad master ; and so 
it is with the economic forces which M. Witte has 
evoked and attempted to bind to the service of the 
oligarchy. Had the whole powers of the nation been 
callec! to the task, they might have been controlled and 
turned to the common good. In a few selfish and 
incompetent hands, they have run riot and converted 
tyranny into anarchy. High Protectionism has pro- 
duced an irresistible Labour movement. State monopoly., 
perpetual borrowing, and class privilege have led 
straight to a hopeless war ; and between war and 
revolution the authors of both find themselves helpless 
and friendless. Russians of every class feel to-day as 
they never felt before the stupidity of the Governmental 
regime which they have borne with such extraordinary 
patience. This power of endurance, which is the most 
striking national characteristic, has carried them almost 
as far as is possible ; and long before Father Gapon 
appeared you might hear in Moscow and Odessa and St. 
Petersburg, not among students and artisans merely, 
but among solid commercial men, words of disgust and 
disillusionment, words of incipient revolt, which were, 
on such lips, a new and ominous phenomenon. 

During the last social upheaval, the revolutionary 



146 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

crisis of twenty-five years ago, industrial capitalism was 
a new feature in the national life, and one of compara- 
tively trifling importance. Ten years of M. Witte 
witnessed a sweeping change in the economic activities 
of the country. While one arm of the State was busy 
with the process of Imperial expansion that led to the 
conflict with Japan, the other arm was engaged in 
building a tariff wall round the Western frontiers, and 
in planning other high Protectionist measures, intended 
to make the country self-sufficing in manufactures as 
well as in the supply of food and raw materials. Else- 
where the " trust," mischievous as it may be, is a 
natural revulsion from the anarchy of capitalistic com- 
petition, and may be controlled by a constitutional 
Government. In Russia it is a direct instrument of the 
despotic State, run for the benefit of the State and a 
small class of magnates. Beside the railway and drink 
monopolies many lesser " trusts " combine to produce 
a thoroughly artificial and unstable condition of com- 
merce and industry. The results of this programme, 
aggravated by the suppression of education and all 
other free activity, are becoming plainly visible. Bank- 
ruptcy follows bankruptcy ; credit is falling to the 
vanishing point ; the great towns teem with unem- 
ployed ; and, unless there be a radical change of policy, 
the bankruptcy of the State itself is only a question 
of time. 

What are the permanent conditions to which the 
rottenness of the fabric of Kussian trade and industry 
is due? It arises from the Autocratic-Protectionist 
design of creating a number of great manufactures by 
artificial process, at the cost of the general community, 
including the working classes, for the benefit of a small 
capitalist and landlord class and of the State exchequer. 
In no European country has the Protectionist idea been 



THE TARIFF 147 

carried out so unmercifully. During the preceding 
twenty years there had been various advances in this 
direction. Thus in 1877 all duties became leviable in 
gold, which was equivalent to an all-round increase of 
30 per cent. In 1881 an addition of 10 per cent, was 
made, and sectional increases were afterwards declared. 
So far, however, foreign half -worked and raw materials 
came in free, or under moderate Protection. In the 
last great tariff revision, that of 1891, the year of the 
great famine, the duties, already high, were put up, on 
the average, 20 per cent. ; and now raw materials pay 
28 per cent., manufactured goods 27 per cent, (rising in 
some cases to over 100 per cent.), and food imports no 
less than 75 per cent, of their values. The result is 
what might have been expected — Russia is ill- clad, ill- 
furnished, ill-equipped in her fields, factories, and mines, 
in transit and transport, in all the mechanism of her com- 
mercial life. The land which might be among the richest 
in Europe is actually the poorest and most hopeless. 

"Russia," says another of her official reporters,* 
"has been generously provided by nature with food 
and the necessaries of manufacture. It could, and should, 
become absolutely independent of foreign supplies for 
all its needs, and, while continuing to be the granary of 
Eastern Europe, it could supply the raw and half- 
manufactured material required throughout Europe, 
thanks to its exceptionally favourable local conditions. 
To attain this end, the Government has entered upon 
the way of positive Protectionism, and it has persisted 
resolutely for twenty years past." Such was the pro- 
gramme. Now let me quote from this same official 
report a typical result. Raw cotton and cotton yarns 
are subject to very high duties. The total consumption 

* " General Results of Industry " by M. N. Langovoy, in " Eussia at the 
End of the Nineteenth Century." 



148 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

of the raw stuff is given at 240,000 tons, of which only 
a third is native product. " The opinion that the 
Russian Protectionist system weighs heavily upon the 
population, and costs the Russian much more than 
the foreigner, in a general way, cannot but be 
regarded as justified," M. Langovoy admits ; and he 
adds this instructive calculation : " One hundred kilos 
of Russian cotton print (common Indian quality) may 
be valued at 210 roubles ; while this article, were it 
not for import duties, could be obtained from abroad 
for about 150 roubles. The Russian consumer, therefore, 
pays to-day about 60 roubles more than the stuffs are 
worth, and, the consumption being 205,000 tons, the 
total over-payment amounts to the very respectable 
sum of 123 millions of roubles.'* That is to say, the 
half- starved mujik is taxed to the tune of twelve and 
a half millions sterling yearly for the benefit of the 
cotton lords, on the pretence that some day or other 
this parasitic trade will be efficient enough to compete 
fairly with Manchester, which at present can buy cotton 
in Alabama, manufacture it, and deliver it on the 
Russian cotton-fields at three-quarters of the price of 
the native article ! 

It may be asked how it comes about that the Russian 
Government allows its official writers to advertise such 
folly. Oddly enough, this, also, is a result of the 
Witte system, which seeks to pave the way for further 
Western loans by participating, at great cost, in inter- 
national exhibitions, maintaining, also at great cost, 
foreign financial representatives, and issuing elaborate 
reports on the expansion of Russian industry and com- 
merce. Some of these officials are delightfully innocent 
persons. M. Langovoy, for instance, supports the 
admission I have just quoted by an argument which is 
so exquisite a specimen of Protectionist ineptitude that 



THE TARIFF 149 

I cannot refrain from summarizing it.* The Russian 
consumer pays 123 million roubles a year more for his 
cotton stuffs than they are worth ; and, still, it is worth 
while, this writer thinks, because large agricultural and 
industrial interests are thus maintained. There is the 
cotton cultivation, the product of which is estimated at 
35 million roubles, and there is the cost of manufac- 
ture, which is estimated at 123 millions — exactly the 
amount of the over-payment already noted. Finally, 
the Treasury gets 30 millions in customs duties. The 
total cost of production of 205,000 tons of cotton tissue 
is, therefore, 188 million roubles. But the consumer 
pays for it, according to M. Langovoy, 430^ millions, 
so that the manufacturers, thanks to the Protectionist 
system, apparently carry away in profit 242^ millions, 
or one-third more than the whole cost of production, 
raw material, and labour included. 

This fact is significant enough ; but the chief gem 
of M. Langovoy's collection lies in the domain of fancy, 
and has no stain of material reality about it. If the 
tariff barrier is removed, he says, the consumer will, it 
is true, pay only 307^ millions for his cotton stuffs, but 
this will go to the foreigner, and it will be 65 millions 
more than the 242^ millions of profit now paid to 
Russian manufacturers, and, therefore, a national loss 
of that amount! So, you see that by paying 123 
millions a year more than you need, you really gain 
65 millions a year, and you have in addition the 
inestimable joy of maintaining national industries ! 
Hundreds of thousands of cotton growers and textile 
hands give their year's labour, and the nation gives 
the manufacturers in addition a profit of 242^ millions, 
when, for a trifle more, they could get the whole of the 
cotton stuff they want without moving a muscle. You 

* Op. cit., pp. 289, 290. 



*5o 



RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 



put 430 millions into the Protectionist machine, and 
you get 188 millions out; and even of this latter sum 
30 millions goes into the Exchequer, to pay for a hated 
police, an unnecessary war, and, incidentally, for the 
writing of a volume which, though for boldness of 
imagination it puts Mr. Chamberlain's modest essays 
and even Mr. Seddon's myth of the " golden sovereigns " 
to shame, can hardly be expected to impress the cold- 
blooded financiers of the Western world. 

No wonder, under an elaborately organized system 
of fiscal lunacy like this, that a few industries grow, as 
predatory enterprise always will when it gets such a 
glorious chance. There is loss as well as gain to the 
manufacturers themselves, though the chief sufferers 
are the masses of the people. Everywhere the double 
influence of the tariff is felt. The high duties on coal 
stimulate mining, and hamper manufacture. The high 
duties on raw cotton stimulate growing in Central Asia, 
and burden the Moscow factories, which depend on 
American raw material. The high duties on machinery 
benefit a few trades, and arrest agriculture and manu- 
facture in general. The following table will show that, 
where there is growth, it has lain much more consider- 
ably on the side of capital than on that of labour. 







Value of 


product. 


Number of workers. 




Factories and 


Millions of roubles. 


Thousands. 




workshops 
in 1897. 






















1887. 


1897. 


1887. 


1897. 


Textiles 


4,449 


463 


946 


399 


642 


Food products 


16,512 


375 


648 


205 


255 


Mines and metallurgy 


3,412 


156 


393 


390 


544 


Metal manufactures 


2,412 


112 


310 


103 


214 


Pottery and glass 


3,413 


28 


82 


67 


143 


Chemicals 


769 


21 


59 


21 


35 


Wood manufactures 


2,357 


25 


102 


30 


86 


Total (including other 












industries) 


39,029 


1334 


2839 


1318 


2098 



THE TARIFF 151 

To these details, it may be added that the chief 
industrial region is that of Moscow and the Middle 
Volga, the second that of St. Petersburg and the Baltic 
provinces, the third that of Poland, the fourth that of 
Ekaterinoslav and the South, after which follow the 
Black Earth zone, the Ural and Eastern provinces, 
Kiev and the South-West, Baku and the Caucasus, 
Kharkov and Little Russia. 

In Russia, as elsewhere, ultra-Protectionism is the 
result of a hungry Exchequer and a hungry governing 
class ; but in this instance while decidedly hindering 
the development of foreign trade, it has not stopped 
the " invasion n of the home market. What it has 
done, beside inflicting a fearful burden on the consumer, 
is to obstruct the natural repayment of exports by 
imports, and to cause a steadily increasing outward 
drain of wheat in satisfaction of foreign loan and 
investment charges. It must not be supposed that 
the foreign trade of the Empire has always borne its 
present artificial character, or that it was stationary 
till M. Witte took it under his care. During the 
first quarter of the last century, which included more 
years of war than of peace, it grew by 57 per cent. ; 
in the second quarter, under a mildly protective tariff, 
by 59 per cent. In the third quarter it advanced 
enormously, " thanks to the great reform of February 
19, 1861, which allowed 23 millions of human beings 
freed from serfdom to exploit the natural wealth of the 
country to their own profit and that of the State ; 
thanks also to the beneficent public and administrative 
reforms which were the logical consequences of the 
emancipation, and also to the rapid extension of rail- 
ways." * The high tariff dates from 1877. From the 

* "Foreign Commerce," by M. B. Pokrovsky, in "Russia at the End of 
the Nineteenth Century," p. 688. 



152 



RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 



beginning of the century foreign commerce had then 
multiplied tenfold ; in the following generation it 
increased only by one quarter. From the average 
of 1861-5 to that of 1871-5, when the tariff was 
about one-third as heavy as at present, exports rose 
from 225 to 470 million roubles, imports from 206 
to 565 million. No subsequent decade can offer such 
a record as this ; and a glance at the details of the 
more recent figures will show that, while on the one 
side the main feature is the forced exports of corn, on 
the other the country is now under the need of buying 
large quantities of raw and manufactured materials at 
higher prices than before. 



Year. 


Food-stuffs. 


Raw and half- 
manufactured 
materials. 


Animals. 


Manufactured 
articles. 


Total. 




£ Millions Sterling 


Exports. 
1898 
1899 
1900 
1901 
1902 
1903 


46,049,918 
33,690,600 
40,504,650 
45,793,750 
55,906,519 
63,250,306 


25,328,512 

26,554,000 
28,682,000 
27,253,125 
27,439,807 
33,190,587 


1,790,206 
1,833,343 
1,901,000 
2,146,250 
2,292,662 
2,148,697 


2,151,881 
1,844,500 
2,071,000 
2,326,875 
2,046,693 
2,277,466 


75,320,517 
63.922,443 
73,158,650 
77,520,000 
87,685,681 
100,867,056 


Imports. 
1898 
1899 
1900 
1901 
1902 
1903 


7,418,375 
7,803,106 
8,476,627 
8,850,625 
8,649,706 
9,250,762 


32,089,019 
32,021,200 
32,361,518 
30,260,000 
31,395,069 
36,420,163 


160,544 
191,462 
120,700 
148,750 
149,068 
152,350 


20,037,368 
23,147,200 
19,868,855 
16,341,250 
15,810,000 
18,071,318 


59,714,306 
63,162,968 
60,827,700 
55,600,625 
56,003,843 
63.904,593 



In 1903 22'9 % of the exports came to the United Kingdom, and 24-4 to Germany ; while of the 
imports 18-6 °/° w ere British, and 39 1 German. 



Notwithstanding the regime in which M. Langovoy 
glories, in spite of a tariff which, for the first time, 
penalized minerals, coal, and cotton, and doubled and 
even quadrupled the duties on cotton and linen thread 
and on iron, £11 millions worth of raw cotton, 



THE TARIFF 153 

£1,300,000 of raw wool and wool yarn, £1^ millions 
of wool, cotton, and flax manufactures, £2,290,000 
worth of coal and coke, £1,300,000 of dye-stuffs and 
paints, £l million worth of iron and steel goods, 
£1,376,000 of chemicals, and nearly £6 millions' worth 
of machinery had to be imported in 1903, all at greatly 
enhanced prices. In that year the Customs duties 
amounted to £25^ millions — about 11 per cent, of the 
revenue of the State, and considerably more than one- 
third of the value of the whole importation. The total 
product of the chief industries tabled on page 150, at 
the rate of progress there shown, must have amounted, 
in 1903, to at least £350 millions ; and, bearing in mind 
M. Langovoy's calculation, it seems probable that the 
artificial appreciation due to the Protectionist system 
amounts to one- quarter of this amount. It is not 
extravagant to say, therefore, that the tariff costs the 
Russian people, on imports and native production 
together, considerably more than a hundred millions 
sterling yearly — or ten times as much as the direct 
taxes of the Empire — of which enormous sum three- 
quarters goes into the pockets of private capitalists, and 
the remainder goes to the State, to be spent on war and 
the up-keep of the oligarchy. 

There is one other considerable and characteristic 
result of the Protectionist system which must be indi- 
cated — the growth of absentee capitalism. Labour 
cannot escape the tariff; money can easily cheat it by 
setting up its agents inside the line of 259 customs 
houses on the Western frontier. In part this is, of 
course, a genuine benefit to native industry. Some of 
the chief manufactures of the Empire have been estab- 
lished by foreigners. The great metal works established 
a generation ago by John Hughes in an uninhabited 
place in the province of Ekaterinoslav, now called 



154 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

Jusovo (i.e. Hughes-ovo; the Russians have forgotten 
the original name, hut sometimes come as near to it as 
"Youth"), where 10,000 hands are employed, was the 
first of its kind. A French Company started iron 
mining and founding in the South ; other like cases 
could be cited. In diffusing technical knowledge, 
creating new industrial centres, giving an example of 
initiative and enterprise, and also, as an official writer 
naively observes, of human conditions of labour, these 
foreign concerns have exercised a salutary influence. 
If their increase in numbers and importance were a 
natural development, the outflow of capital profits 
would be so much less considerable an item than the 
gain to the native labourer and consumer that it would 
not call for special notice. But we have seen above 
that, under Russian Protectionism, the reward of the 
manufacturer is infinitely larger than that of the pro- 
ducers of raw material and the factory workers put 
together ; and, in these cases, most of this larger share 
goes abroad in the shape of dividends, or of wheat and 
other native produce which pays those dividends. It 
has been estimated that 20 per cent, of the capital of 
registered companies in the Empire belongs to foreigners. 
These enterprises constitute a large and probably an 
increasing part of the manufactures on the growth of 
which the official statisticians go into rhapsodies ; they 
include especially British, French, Belgian, and American 
metal works in the South, German foundries and factories 
in Poland, French, British, and Belgian metal works in 
the Ural, Swedish and British oil companies in the 
Caspian and Black Sea regions, German textile factories 
in Poland, water, tramways, gas and electric - light 
companies in the large towns. Forty-five foreign metal 
companies and fifteen oil companies alone engage about 
£25 millions of nominal capital, and distribute over a 



THE TARIFF 155 

million sterling a year in dividends. They multiply, 
despite the thousand annoyances of life under the 
Tsardom, because nowhere else can such an opportunity 
of safe and easy exploitation be found. Without them 
there would be little or no increase of industry to boast 
of, but it would not serve the purpose of M. Witte and 
his successors and partners to admit that their success 
marks the failure of their " national " policy. 

We need not wonder, then, either that indus- 
trialism is growing in the Empire, or that agriculture 
is stagnant, the yield being less than in any other 
European country ; that the factory workers in these 
very protected trades work longer hours for lower 
wages than their fellows in any Western country ; that 
for years past there has been serious commercial depres- 
sion, and that year after year the Finance Minister has 
to issue warnings against excessive speculation. No 
wonder, with iron at three times the English price, that 
manufacture and agriculture are handicapped. The 
export of corn grows, and the home consumption, 
already remarkably low, has actually fallen in recent 
years. The national beverage, tea, costs 4s. a pound, 
and the consumption per head is less than one-sixth 
of the English average. While Russian bountied sugar 
was being " dumped " in London (until our own Pro- 
tectionists determined to save us from the curse of cheap 
imports !) it was a luxury doled out three lumps at a 
time in the Moscow restaurants. 

This sugar monopoly, which is strictly regulated and 
directed from beginning to end by the Government 
in collusion with the great beet-growers, exhibits yet 
another development of predatory industrialism. It is 
the subject of perpetual official pride, and M. Witte, in a 
Note addressed in July, 1902, to the Powers signatories 
of the Brussels Anti-Sugar Bounties Convention, claimed 



156 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

that its object was " to regulate the amount sold on the 
home market, in order to obviate the evils of over- 
production and to increase its consumption in Russia." 
A short examination of the facts of this triumphant 
example of the Witte policy, beside showing that these 
two claims are the reverse of the truth, will give an 
enlightening glimpse of the oligarchy in its capacity of 
industrial monopolist.* 

Although it is more than a century since the first 
sugar factory was established in the Empire, it is only 
in the last twenty-five years that the native supply has 
exceeded the native demand. The area under beetroot 
in 1903 amounted to 1,390,000 acres, the largest in the 
world, and more than one -third larger than that of 
Germany ; but it is significant that Germany's produc- 
tion of sugar was one-and-a-half times greater. Last 
year the area sown was somewhat smaller ; but the 
crop is still one of very considerable importance, about 
two-thirds being grown by private cultivators, and the 
rest by the manufacturers. Russian soil is very favour- 
able to it, both in yield of beet and in its high saccharine 
value. The crop is officially estimated to engage a 
yearly total of 44 million labour-days, of a value to the 
labourers of 15 J to 22 million roubles ; this type of 
agricultural labour is, therefore, apparently valued at 
from tenpence to thirteen pence a day ! In 1890 there 
were 222 sugar factories at work, 268 in 1899, and 275 
in 1903; but the output has more than doubled in 
the same period. 

Up to 1895 the sugar manufacturers formed an 
unofficial ring, the operating centre of which was the 

* In what follows I am indebted to the essay on " The Sugar Industry-," 
by M. P. Tchefranoff, in " Russia at the End of the Nineteenth Century," and 
the Reports of the British Consuls at Odessa for 1892 and St. Petersburg for 
1895 and 1903. 



THE TARIFF 157 

Kiev Exchange. On the least pretext of crop-shortage 
or over-export they put up prices, and kept them up, 
as our Consul said, " without any consideration for the 
poor peasantry, who are thereby debarred from using 
sugar unless on very rare occasions." They were, if 
you please, "tired of receiving dividends less than 
30 or 40 per cent.," and so had formed a syndicate, 
" which, in turn, conceived the plan of exporting the 
surplus production at a considerable loss, in order to 
keep up the price of the much larger quantity con- 
sumed in the country. To each factory is, therefore, 
allotted a limit as to its percentage of home require- 
ments ; all sugar produced over and above that limit 
had to be exported at whatever price it might bring. 
Every one knew such a plan was bound to raise the 
price of sugar." But there was " a saving clause 
inserted in the agreement of the syndicate to the effect 
that, should the price rise above 4 roubles 50 kopeks 
per pood (£1 7 s. per cwt.), then export was to cease, 
and foreign sugar was to be admitted duty-free. As 
expected, the operation of the syndicate raised the 
dividends of sugar factories ; but the arrangement to 
guard the interests of the general consumer has been 
forgotten." 

Such was the system from 1887 until M. de Witte 
put himself at the head of the syndicate in 1895. The 
object of the newly modelled ring was roundly declared 
by our Consul in St. Petersburg to be "further pro- 
tecting the interests of the Russian sugar manufacturer, 
or, in other words, artificially bolstering up the price of 
native-grown sugar in the country." The only funda- 
mental change was that all owners of sugar-works were 
now compelled to join the syndicate, of which the 
Minister of Finance became director -in -chief. It 
became, in fact, a State monopoly of enormous size and 



158 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

power, worked by an autocratic Minister directly for 
the benefit of the State and the favoured capitalists at 
the cost of the nation. The number of factories and 
their production was not directly limited, but sales on 
the home market were limited to 19,286 cwts. per 
factory, and were subjected to payment of an excise 
duty of 1 rouble 75 kopeks per pood (lis. &d. per cwt.), 
this duty being rebated on quantities exported. Each 
year the Finance Minister was to estimate in advance 
the quantity of home consumption. The quantity 
produced by all the factories over and above this 
amount was then constituted a reserve stock and divided 
into two parts — a permanent portion, which could only 
be liberated with Ministerial sanction when prices had 
reached a certain level (£1 135. 10c?. per cwt. in 
September-December, 1895), and a disposable portion, 
which could be exported freely, but could only be sold 
on the home market on payment of double excise duty 
(at that time, £1 3s. Ad. per cwt.). 

Imagine the power of the man at the head of such 
a trust ! He has the whole coercive machinery of the 
State behind him. He determines, without appeal, home 
supplies and home prices, the amount and disposal of 
reserve stocks ; and in these decisions he affects directly 
the condition of millions of consumers, hundreds of 
thousands of peasant cultivators, and thousands of 
factory hands. The whole of the manufacturing class 
is reduced to a servile position ; it is encouraged, even 
compelled — this is the whole raison d'etre of the system 
—to sell dear at home and cheap abroad. The pretence 
of limiting over-production was a mere pretence ; in 
1903 the surplus amounted to over 10 per cent. The 
pretence of cheapening supplies was a piece of gross 
hypocrisy; that object could have been obtained im- 
mediately by freeing the trade from restriction. The 



THE TARIFF 159 

whole aim of the system is to maintain a permanent 
corner relieved by free exports and supported by a 
prohibitive tariff against foreign imports. The cost of 
production, which stood at about 2d. per pound ten years 
ago, is now down to lid. ; but it is not the mujik or 
the town workman who benefits. While the home con- 
sumption increased from 19 million quintals in the five 
years ending 1893, to 24 millions in 1894-8, the 
exports nearly doubled in that period, and in 1903 they 
amounted to actually double the export of the previous 
year, or 240,000 tons. The annual consumption in 
Eussia at the same time was 18 lbs. per head, about 
one-fifth of that of the United Kingdom, where no beet 
is grown and no sugar extracted ; and while we were 
paying in London 6s. per cwt. for Eussian sugar, the 
Kussian people were paying between three and five 
times that sum for their own produce. But, to do M. 
de Witte and his co-partners full justice, we must re- 
member that in 1902 sugar brought into the Exchequer 
about £8,500,000, and that it is budgetted to produce 
almost as much in the present year of disaster, 1905. 



CHAPTER XII 

A SICK SOCIETY 

The results of the long- continued obscurantism we 
have now traced, aggravated by the mobilization, the 
depression of trade, and finally by the effects of a cold 
spring and a dry summer, were seen last year in a failure 
of crops and extreme suffering in many of the richest 
corn-growing lands of the Empire. Nor is there the 
slightest possibility of any improvement in the economic 
position of the peasantry in the early future, while un- 
favourable climatic conditions would precipitate a 
calamity such as has repeatedly clouded the life of 
Eussia during the last generation. The recurrence of 
famine is, after all, the chief count in the indictment 
of the Tsardom. The six bad harvests of the period 
1873-89 were confined to certain portions of the country, 
that of 1873 mainly affecting Samara and the eastern 
provinces, that of 1875 the south, and those of 1880, 
1885, 1886, and 1889 being local. In the years 1891 
and 1896 the failure of crops was widespread, and 
amounted to a national disaster. It has sometimes been 
suggested that famine in Russia is, and will always be, 
inevitable under present physical and climatic con- 
ditions. That is mere moonshine. If the Government 
had shown the same ingenuity and enterprise in develop- 
ing agriculture that they have shown in nursing parasitic 
industries, had spent on technical education what has 

160 



A SICK SOCIETY i6t 

gone into the purse of the Holy Synod, had extended 
irrigation as they have extended railways, had invested 
in the care of forests and the improvement of crops and 
cattle what they have put into the drink trade, there 
would be no talk of famine to-day. 

Instead, the peasants have been of deliberate policy 
kept in a condition of degrading ignorance and sub- 
servience, so that years must elapse ere they are able to 
use the better machinery and methods available ; and 
the zemstvos, those provincial councils in which lay the 
only hope of a better organization of rural life, have 
been disabled and forbidden to carry out plans of 
education and assistance. The food of the mujik is 
always meagre enough, and so narrow is the taxable 
margin, even in good times, that, as we have seen, every 
now and then immense arrears have to be wiped out by 
an act of royal " clemency." In the rapid and costly 
extension of the railway system there has always been 
held out the double object of internal development and 
external " defence." By far the greater part of the 
millions that have been spent in this way have gone in 
building confessedly " strategic " lines, but the pretence 
of helping , agriculture has always been kept up. The 
export of cereals has indeed been greatly assisted — a 
dubious boon, except to the great landlords. But the 
present situation well illustrates the antagonism of the 
two aims. If peace could have been maintained for, 
say, half a century to come, the Trans-Siberian line, 
though it would probably still have failed to pay for 
itself, would have greatly stimulated the exploitation of 
the virgin territories through which it runs. As it is, 
it has been worse than a "white elephant"; it has 
actually been the means of setting back Siberian life to 
a point from which it will take a generation to recover. 

While in Moscow last summer I had an exceedingly 

M 



i62 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

interesting and enlightening talk with Mr. H. Cooke, 
the British commercial agent, who had recently returned 
from a very extensive journey through the agricultural 
regions of Asiatic Russia. He explained to me, among 
other things, the really remarkable growth of butter- 
making, an industry created, one may almost say, by 
the demands of the British market, but entirely de- 
pendent on the great railway. The first dairy producing 
for export was founded only ten years ago ; there are 
now nearly two thousand establishments, and in four 
years the total amount despatched has increased from 
five to nearly a hundred millions of pounds. This is, of 
course, an exceptional record ; as Mr. Cooke said in one 
of his recent reports, " Cheap and cumbrous commodities 
can hardly bear the charge of so long a land journey," 
while experience is fully justifying his remark that " the 
sea will probably hold its own in the carriage of all but 
valuable cargoes, perishable articles, and goods deliver- 
able by fixed date." What the sea does for the produce 
of the Pacific coast, the rivers did for Siberian lumber 
and agricultural exports. But the competition of the 
railway has crippled the river traffic, steamboat services 
have been suspended or weakened, and energy has been 
diverted from the improvement of high roads to the 
hasty completion of a single line of railway, of which no 
serious student has much hope so far as goods traffic is 
concerned. When military exigencies put a complete 
stop to the use of this one means of communication, the 
economic severance of the two parts of the empire pro- 
duced widespread loss, and an injury to credit that will 
long be felt. The agricultural development of Siberia 
was arrested at a stroke ; and in Moscow, which depends 
very largely on the eastern trade, many branches of 
business were brought to a standstill, other effects of the 
war — the calling out of reserves, the requisitions of 



A SICK SOCIETY 163 

cattle and forage, the stoppage of emigration, the rise 
of prices, the suspension of Government works, the 
general collapse of industrial employment — being thus 
specially aggravated. 

I give this as an example of the way in which the 
policy of the Government tends to deepen the disabilities 
of the mass of the population, of which over 90 per cent, 
in Siberia and over 70 per cent, in European Russia are 
directly engaged in agriculture. It is an indirect effect, 
yet, when we think of what might have been done with 
these wasted millions, if the " Little Father " had been 
thinking of his own people, instead of the eastern 
swamps where hundreds of thousands of them have 
been fruitlessly sacrificed, we can by no means acquit 
the oligarchy of responsibility. But what is morally 
worse, if not in the issue more disastrous, is the existence 
of a domestic policy as to which it is almost impossible 
to resist the conclusion which I have heard argued that 
it is directly and deliberately designed to keep the people 
poor and ignorant. That at any rate is its result. The 
Saratoff zemstvo proposes to open peasant classes in rural 
economy ,• M. Plehve imposes his veto. The Koursk 
zemstvo decides to open a summer course of instruction 
for rural teachers ; M. Plehve imposes his veto. The 
Voronej Agricultural Committee reports that the slow 
death of the Russian village is inevitable if the present 
system continues ; its chief members are arrested and 
exiled. In other places the active members of the local 
governing bodies are simply removed, or confirmation of 
their appointment is refused, while the councils them- 
selves are forbidden to undertake certain kinds of work 
or to co-operate with each other (lest, forsooth, they 
should lay the foundation of a larger representative 
structure) ; their most devoted servants are removed ; 
necessary loans are refused to them, on the ground that 



1 64 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

all the money available is needed for the war, a hypo- 
critical pretext. 

Where the central brain of a State is thus diseased 
all manner of minor evils inevitably accumulate. The 
inanities of the censorship, the unceasing petty tyranny 
of the police and other Government agents, the lack of 
legal security, are plagues of commercial, as well as 
professional and private life. Even worse is the, to 
British eyes, extraordinary corruption which pervades 
the whole fabric of official and sub-official society. 

" Yes," said one of my friends, a man in an important 
administrative position, " you can hardly exaggerate 
this evil. Throughout officialdom, from the Baltic dock- 
yards, where millions disappear mysteriously and it 
takes months to get a fleet to sea, to far Dalny — which, 
you know, is nicknamed Lishny, ' The Not- wanted ' — 
corruption is universal. You have seen it yourself in 
little things — any merchant will tell you that half his 
profits go in backsheesh — but you can hardly imagine 
the boldness of swindling that permeates the whole of 
our society. Look at that splendid hotel opposite. It 
was an insignificant affair a year or two ago, but fire 
came opportunely to the aid of the proprietors, and this 
new palace has been built out of the insurance money. 

"Look at this map of the Siberian Railway. Do 
you notice anything curious here, and here, and here ? 
Take this one case : Tomsk is the capital of Siberia, its 
only intellectual centre, the seat of government and 
of a great university. But the main line passes it by 
at a distance of sixty miles. Why ? Because the local 
authorities would not give the engineers the bribes they 
demanded ! For a long time you had to get off at a 
wayside station — Taiga — and drive those sixty miles. 
At last a branch line had to be built. Oh, I am not 
talking scandal ; I can give you the names, which I got 



A SICK SOCIETY 165 

on the spot. And this is only one case out of many. 
You may have heard the history of our great Moscow 
Cathedral, the Temple of the Saviour, which took sixty 
years to build, during which time the funds disappeared 
several times over. The same thing happened with the 
Alexander II. Memorial Church in St. Petersburg. No 
one is punished for these things. How can you expect 
it, when every official is understood to have his price, 
and the connection of the Tsar's land speculations on 
the Yalu with the origin of the war is matter of common 
gossip ? The war — well, war is always the great oppor- 
tunity of the swindler. If we are robbed on every 
hand in times of peace, what wonder that in time of 
war ammunition is missing, ships are unseaworthy, and 
fraudulent contractors make easy fortunes while our 
soldiers wade through the marshes of Manchuria in paper 
boots, and starve for lack of proper food ? If the holy 
icons do not protect our churches from pillage, how can 
they protect the charity sent to the wounded and dying 
on the battlefield ? But perhaps you do not know the 
story of the Red Cross Fund ? " 

I had, in fact, already heard something of this scandal. 
A series of abuses in the Red Cross Society had come to 
light. A prominent member of its executive committee 
had given in his resignation, ostensibly on account of 
health, really, as was perfectly well known, because large 
sums for which he was responsible were missing, and it was 
understood that he had spent them in financial specula- 
tion. In Moscow the president of the local committee, 
Mme. Yishnyevska, and her husband and the office staff 
had been relieved of their duties on account of the dis- 
covery of " grave irregularities and disorders." Even 
by themselves these events would have excited some 
feeling, for, as my friend said, if people will steal Red 
Cross money, what will they not do ? But these were 



1 66 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

not solitary cases. From the provinces came rumours 
of trials, of course with closed doors, of functionaries 
guilty of various kinds of fraud. At Odessa a highly 
decorated officer had been caught, with two accomplices, 
selling exemptions from military service. At Vilna a 
lieutenant-colonel and an hospital doctor had been con- 
victed on a like charge. At Tomsk there was a remounts 
scandal after the South African model. At Irkutsk a 
lieutenant-colonel had been cashiered for selling con- 
tracts. In Moscow a prison inspector, who was a captain 
of reserves and a member of the petty nobility well 
known in society, had forged the signature of the 
Governor to bills amounting to over seven thousand 
pounds. And so on. 

When a second series of abuses in the Red Cross 
Society was revealed, a tremor of shame and alarm 
ran through the educated classes of the Empire. This 
time the offenders were of higher rank : it was Prince 
Golitzin and Count Lanskoy who had failed to account 
for moneys received by them for the equipment of 
hospitals and other methods of relief. Nothing could 
now be regarded as safe ; distrust spread like a flame. 
The zemstvos tried to keep the administration of their 
relief funds in their own hands. M. Plehve suppressed 
their tentatives of independence, but he could do nothing 
to restore confidence in the society which had at its head 
the Dowager Empress and the Tsar himself, whose funds 
before the war amounted to over a million sterling, and 
which engaged the loyal support of 20,000 members 
enrolled in over 500 branches. " The one truly enormous 
treasure which enables the Red Cross ceaselessly to extend 
its action," says a Government report that lies before 
me, " is the confidence it inspires in Russian society, in 
all the brave hearts of Russia. Till now Russia has 
recompensed the Red Cross all its expenditure, and it 



A SICK SOCIETY 167 

will always do so, for there is no reason to suppose that 
this firm support will ever be lacking." Alas ! for 
official prophecies. One day — I had the story from 
more than one trustworthy mouth — the Grand Duchess 
Elizabeth, startled by the rumours that reached her, 
decided to apply a test. A load of Red Cross supplies 
on which she and her assistants had been busy was to 
leave by that day's train for the Far East. Arrived at 
the station, she was shown the van duly laden with 

boxes and packages. Were they quite sure ? Oh, 

certainly ! But the lady was not easily to be put off. 
She would have some of the boxes opened ere she could 
quite believe. Needs must, and so they were opened. 
Some were empty, others full of straw and bricks ! The 
story goes that the Grand Duchess burst into tears. It 
is a slow and painful process, this of Eussia's awaken- 
ing ; and there are those I pity more than the Grand 
Duchess. 

Official venality is a very ancient evil in the Empire 
of the Tsar. Gogol pilloried it in " The Revisor," but 
it was already hardy enough to outlive the cruelest 
satire. " The administration, the finances, the army, 
all the departments of the public service," says Leroy- 
Beaulieu, " are a prey to embezzlement, bribery, fraud, 
corruption, under all its forms. Like a deadly virus 
spreading throughout the entire social anatomy, ad- 
ministrative corruption has poisoned all its organs, 
altered all their functions, enervated all their powers." 
If this was true ten years ago, much more so is it to-day, 
under the feeblest monarch Russia has had for a century 
past. There are, of course, some small compensations. 
Jew and Nonconformist buy a little of the immunity 
the law denies to them. The prisoner with means buys 
the little comforts that would otherwise be lacking. 
The wheels of many a Circumlocution Office are oiled, 



168 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

tlie strangling coil of red tape often loosened, by a bribe 
which is often regarded as a necessary supplement to an 
inadequate official salary. Perquisites are recognized 
by ancient custom, and go by regular scales. But the 
evil, beginning far back in the extortion of the alien 
adventurers who founded the bureaucracy, and easily 
sanctioned in a society based on serfdom, has grown in 
variety and extent till it is indeed a universal poison, 
till honesty in the public service is practicably impos- 
sible. It is aggravated by the fact that officials are 
virtually irresponsible, being above the jurisdiction of 
the ordinary courts and only open to prosecution by 
their superiors. It is aggravated, again, by the newer 
financial developments with which we are familiar in 
the West. 

In the old governing hierarchy there is no corner 
that can be said to be free from this curse. The Court 
itself is tainted with the sordid influence of favourites 
and the strife of parties bent on personal aggrandize- 
ment. The Tsar is a millionaire many times over, 
perhaps the richest individual in the world, yet his 
hands are not clean in this respect, and there is hardly 
a salon that may not be polluted any day by the 
presence of some titled, wealthy, and influential 
swindler. 



CHAPTER XIII 



THE FINAL CRIME 



On February 8, 1904, was struck, without the formal 
notice required by international law, the first blow in 
the first war between Great Powers that has been carried 
on under modern conditions. The usual kind of news- 
paper comment heralded this terrible event. The con- 
flict of interests, we were told, had reached a point 
when no other " solution " was possible ; and the early 
Japanese naval victories were described as " decisive." 
Yet it was as plain from the outset that this would be 
a long and disastrous struggle for both parties as that 
it was an unnecessary and unrighteous one. Another 
conclusion which emerged from an examination of the 
facts was that Great Britain made this war possible 
when she concluded the Japanese Treaty of 1902, and 
so lay under a secondary responsibility. Perhaps with- 
out foreseeing or intending it, we had made ourselves 
the chief ring-keeper in a monstrous duel from which 
neither party could really gain, and the whole world 
must suffer. 

Let us anticipate some future " little Peterkin," and 
ask on what pretexts this calamity was brought about. 
The well-established facts of the development of the Far 
Eastern Question were usefully supplemented by state- 
ments of claim issued by Kussian and Japanese authority 
respectively, and published two days after the outbreak 

169 



170 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

of hostilities. Looking back nine years to the day 
when Japan was ordered off the mainland of Asia by 
Russia, Germany, and France, we see the two present 
adversaries, a very old and a very young Power, both 
greedy for the heritage of East Asiatic suzerainty, 
watched by a group of States who thought it quite easy 
to coerce the new-comer, and quite impossible to do 
more than threaten the old giant who spread his arms 
out from the Bay of Finland to the Yellow Sea. 
Japans humiliation was softened by the receipt of forty 
millions of Chinese money, but that was not enough. 
Preparations for war were masked under successive 
negotiations with the arch-enemy. While the Russian 
oligarchy hurried on their trunk railway, the Japanese 
oligarchy set to work to make a big army and a first- 
class navy. The rivals made compacts from time to 
time, and if breach of promise is in itself a good excuse 
for wholesale murder, the Mikado could offer a case for 
the war he started. In 1896, agreements signed at 
Seoul and Moscow constituted a mutual recognition of 
interests in Korea. In 1898, Russia obtained leases of 
Port Arthur and Talien-wan, and gave the world the 
best reason to conclude that they would be permanent, 
a mere synonym for possession. In the same year 
Russia recognized the commercial and industrial in- 
terests of Japan in Korea as predominant. In the 
autumn of 1900 she took steps which were regarded by 
Japan as a threat upon the Straits of Korea, and — a 
matter open to no misunderstanding — virtually occupied 
Manchuria under the pretext of helping to suppress the 
Boxers. Repeated pledges were given that the army 
should be withdrawn as soon as the pacification was 
accomplished, but, instead of withdrawal, the army was 
followed by the railway, and the railway by the virtual 
cession of a strip of land on either side. The giant had 



THE FINAL CRIME 171 

got his grip ; England and her fellows would, Japan 
could, do nothing. 

Then came the great re-alignment of power, marked 
by the conclusion of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance of 
1902, based upon the aim of "maintaining the inde- 
pendence and territorial integrity of the Empire of 
China and the Empire of Korea, and of securing equal 
opportunities in those countries for the commerce and 
industry of all nations." The foes were now face to 
face, with England warning off the rest of the precious 
" Concert" in which she had played so ineffectual a part. 
Japan was not yet quite ready for the final struggle ; 
but negotiations began to take a more urgent form. 
The Tsar appointed a " Viceroy of the Far East," and 
reports of the establishment of Kussian posts on the 
Yalu and in Northern Korea hurried on the crisis. The 
proposals made by Japan in August, 1903, included 
the following chief points : " (l) A mutual engage- 
ment to respect the independence and the territorial 
integrity of the Chinese and Korean Empires. (2) A 
mutual engagement to maintain the principle of equal 
opportunity for the commerce and industry of all 
nations in those two countries. (3) Keciprocal recog- 
nition of Japan's preponderating interests in Korea, 
and Russia's special interests in railway enterprises in 
Manchuria." In the end the only substantial question 
became that of Japan's demand for a definite treaty 
recognition of " the territorial integrity of China in 
Manchuria," and, as bearing upon this, the Russian 
proposal of a neutral zone in Northern Korea, a pro- 
posal in itself strongly suggestive of an intention on the 
part of Russia to continue in occupation of the border- 
land. Russia refused to give Japan any undertaking 
on the major point ; but, on the eve of, or perhaps after, 
the stoppage of negotiations, intimated to the Powers 



172 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

generally that " the Imperial Government, however, 
does not refuse, so long as the occupation of Manchuria 
lasts, to recognize both the sovereignty of the Bogdo 
Khan (Emperor of China) in Manchuria, and the 
privileges acquired there by the Powers through treaties 
with China." On neither side, in this contention, could 
it be said that there was one of the great moral issues 
that appeal irresistibly to the conscience ; it was a clash 
of material ambitions, with, it is true, a balance of merit 
on one side, but without any redeeming touch of high 
and unselfish purpose on either. The interests of every 
possible and impossible party were discussed — except 
the inhabitants of Korea and Manchuria. If we ask 
whether the balance of merit in these opposed ambitions 
could not have been rectified by some less disastrous 
process, we are met by the fact that Japan openly 
refused to entertain any offer of mediation, this refusal 
being, in fact, only the natural climax of years of 
resolute preparation to fight for her own hand. Russian 
duplicity is only too well proved ; but with Japan lies 
the responsibility of forcing on hostilities, when, with 
Great Britain and the United States in active sympathy, 
and France and Italy not ill-disposed, she could have 
appealed with confidence to The Hague Court for a 
verdict on the questions of fact and equity, and to an 
International Conference for joint action to give effect 
to that verdict. Not Japan and Russia and their foolish 
backers only, but every other civilized State in the 
world, probably now wish that this mild prescription 
had been given a trial. 

It is no part of my plan here to trace the course of 
the hostilities, but I must endeavour to indicate their 
effect upon the mutual relations of the Russian Govern- 
ment, the Russian people, and the outside world. 
Perhaps the most painful fact of all is the proof this 



THE FINAL CRIME 173 

fearful conflict has afforded of the insensibility of the 
great mass of people even in countries priding them- 
selves on being the most highly civilized. Day after 
day, month after month, the tales of bloodshed have 
been poured out. A Russian battleship had been blown 
up with 700 of her crew; a Japanese transport, whose 
troops refused to surrender, was deliberately sunk ; the 
fighting on the Yalu was followed by the disaster of 
Liao-Yang, the fall of Port Arthur by the yet greater 
debacle of Mukden, where 850,000 men were said to 
be engaged, Kuropatkin losing 26,500 killed, 40,000 
prisoners, and 90,000 other casualties. Before this 
well-nigh unprecedented slaughter, the Eussians were 
estimated to have lost 180,000 men and 50,000 prisoners, 
and the Japanese 125,000. Experience shows that 
figures like these have no more effect upon the average 
mind than the calculation of astronomical distances. 
Better a single picture such as this drawn by Tolstoy 
fifty years ago at Sevastopol : 

"Hundreds of bodies, freshly smeared with blood, of men 
who two hours previous had been filled with divers lofty or 
petty hopes and desires, now lay, with stiffened limbs, in the 
dewy, flowery valley which separated the bastion from the 
trench, and on the level floor of the chapel for the dead ; hun- 
dreds of men crawled, twisted, and groaned, with curses and 
prayers on their parched lips, some amid the corpses in the 
flower-strewn vale, others on stretchers, in cots, and on the 
blood-stained floor of the hospital. And still, as on the days 
preceding, the dawn glowed over Sapun Mountain, the twinkling 
stars paled, the white mist spread abroad from the dark sounding 
sea, the red glow illuminated the East, long crimson cloudlets 
darted across the blue horizon ; and still, as on days preceding, 
the powerful, all-beautiful sun rose up, giving promise of joy, 
love, and happiness to all who dwell on earth." 

But the Japanese war has produced no Tolstoy. 
People who had questioned De Bloch's account of the 



174 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

deadliness of modern arms talk glibly of " the horrors 
of war " ; but it may be doubted whether this is much 
more than a form of words. Pretty ladies, who would 
faint over a bleeding finger, discussed the latest cable- 
grams from the front without a tremor. Their own 
kith and kin were not concerned ; and imagination is a 
blessing, or a curse, with which Nature seems unable 
to endow more than a few of her children. How, indeed, 
could we conceive even one of this rapid succession of 
horrors — say, the drowning of seven hundred able- 
bodied men in ten minutes \ A single individual on the 
Petropavlovsk — the great realistic painter, Verest- 
chagin — was known to us, and every one who has seen 
his pictures felt a certain sense of loss. The rest were 
mere cyphers ; yet they, also, were human personalities 
— fathers and sons, with children and parents hungering 
for their return ; good neighbours and hard workers, 
many of them, in field or factory, before they fell in the 
lottery of conscription ; thinkers and artists, even, some 
of them ; and sufferers all. Hardly one of them that 
had not some useful capacity or some welcome trait. 
Each had cost a mother and father years of labour and 
anxiety ; each had just begun to repay the heavy debt, 
when he was seized for sacrifice in the devouring machine 
of the Tsardom. There was Paul, the Finnish lumber- 
man, and Vasili from Libau, and Alexander the light- 
hearted, with his tales of Odessa and Constantinople, 
and hundreds more ; enough of them for five or six 
whole villages, and every one a separate soul, whose 
worst sin was his obedience to a command no full-grown 
man will ever obey. One day the clique of land- 
grabbing ogres in St. Petersburg is challenged by another 
clique of much the same sort in Tokyo. The ogres 
know better than fight themselves; that part of the 
affair falls to the seven hundred, and thousands of other 



THE FINAL CRIME 175 

too obedient village-fulls on both sides. There is a 
short respite ; then — phut-ssh ! a blaze and reek of 
hell-fire, and the seven hundred human bodies, once 
strong and beloved, are a cloud of bloody fragments, 
soon to be mercifully lost in the desert of waters, along 
with a million pounds' worth of wood and iron. How 
can we realize these things ? If the manikin Tsar 
and his Court of ogres could fully realize one such 
horror, the world would be relieved of them at no 
greater cost than that of two or three new lunatic 
asylums. Consideration for human beings as such, as 
incarnate mysteries before the lowliest of whom we may 
well bow in sympathetic wonder, is, it is true, a senti- 
ment rarely met with. Yet it is the foundation principle 
of Christianity, the sine qua non of civilization. 

In the political domain, however, the military 
collapse of the Kussian oligarchy has already wrought 
a sweeping change. For months after the outbreak of 
hostilities the whole sentiment of Europe was enlisted 
on the side of Eussia. The advertisements of the 
Siberian railway as an instrument of commerce and 
civilization were not yet forgotten ; and the Tsar had 
not yet openly avowed, as he did with characteristic 
fatuity on the eve of the battle of Mukden, his 
intention of firmly establishing his naval power on 
the waters of the Pacific. The feeling that Eussia 
had been unfairly surprised and must have full scope to 
vindicate her wounded prestige was reinforced by the 
general European dislike of the yellow race that had 
made so aggressive an entry upon the stage of world 
politics. Thus the St. Petersburg circular, refusing any 
attempt at mediation in May, 1904, passed without 
hostile notice. But as the record of defeat and humilia- 
tion lengthened, as the incapacity of the Russian 
Government to conduct the campaign was brought 



176 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

into ever clearer contrast with the efficiency, vigour, 
and orderliness of the Japanese attack, the vague 
sympathy that follows the appearance of success veered 
round ; and the fantastic movements of the new Baltic 
fleets before and after the episode of the Dogger Bank 
completed the transformation. To the sound British 
instinct which regarded the despotism not only as the 
cause of wholesale suffering at home but as a constant 
threat against the world's peace, there was now added 
a sense of the stupidity of this pretentious structure 
before which the world had so long bowed. It was 
seen that the Hull fishermen had to suffer because a 
distant Empire tolerated a government as incapable as 
it was inhumane. So long as this Baltic Fleet stayed 
at home, the stories of the jobbery and theft that 
accompanied its construction, the bigotry and ignorance 
amid which Russian officers are trained, the organized 
lawlessness of which the Russian people are the daily 
victims, did not touch us very nearly. So long as the 
Tsardom could preserve itself, the French bondholder 
did not trouble himself much about the wrongs of the 
mujik. But an oligarchy which can neither govern nor 
fight must no longer expect support even in the heart- 
less world of the great money-lenders. 

Thus, at last, considerations of business reinforce 
the feeble promptings of offended humanity. We hear 
no more interested appeals for an Anglo-Russian 
alliance. I have indicated my own criticism of our 
perilous treaty with Japan. But, beyond commercial 
and arbitration treaties, there can be no safe compact 
between free countries like France, the United States, 
and Great Britain, and the corrupt, cruel, and stupid 
class who are the present masters of Muscovy. A 
citadel of despotism is an offence and stumbling-block 
to all free men in every clime, as a State successfully 



THE FINAL CRIME 177 

striving to grow up to the democratic ideal is an 
encouragement and hope for all humanity. Geo- 
graphical conditions happily save us from any immediate 
danger of conflict with the Tsardom ; but it has 
established a little army of spies in every great capital 
of Europe ; it has poisoned the life of the Balkan 
States, of Persia, and of China by their intrigues ; it 
has maintained upon his throne Abdul the Assassin, 
with licence to slaughter the Armenians at will. It is, 
at least to some extent, responsible for the burden of 
armaments which lies upon the shoulders of the people 
of India ; it has done its best to extinguish the liberal 
tradition in France, and to keep the Republic in a 
humiliating tutelage. The Dukhobors make good 
British colonists, and yet leave us ground to loathe 
their former oppressors. The hope of Whitechapel is 
that Russia should be freed, not that England's honour- 
able gift of asylum should be revoked. 

We have seen in preceding chapters that in any 
consideration of the future of Russia, in her internal 
and external relations, there are two minor factors — 
the Court and the intelligenzia — and five greater 
quantities to be reckoned with ; on the one hand, 
the bureaucracy, including the police and the Orthodox 
priesthood ; on the other, the peasantry and the town 
workmen ; with the army at once joining and dividing 
the opposed forces of rulers and ruled. It is time that 
the main facts about the Russian army were more 
accurately appreciated. For generations it has been 
the bogey of neighbouring peoples, and it is now the 
bogey of those who most earnestly hope for the down- 
fall of the system headed by Nicholas II. But there 
are grounds for believing that, as it has failed, and not 
for the first time, as an instrument of foreign aggression, 
so it will fail as an instrument of domestic oppression, 

N 



178 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

and that this double failure will complete a revolution 
of the utmost promise for the increase of peace and 
liberty in the world. 

Externally, the fabric of Russian military power was 
more imposing on the eve of the Manchurian war than 
it had ever been. In ten years the normal expenditure 
on the army had increased by ten million pounds 
sterling a year, that on the navy by nearly seven 
millions. In the budget of 1904, the former stood 
at over £36,000,000 and the latter at £14,000,000, 
these sums not including the expense of the Siberian 
and other strategic railways. The navy was new, and 
both forces were newly armed. The army counted 
about a million men on a peace footing — about double 
the strength of the German army — and the Empire was 
supposed to be able to call out five or six millions in 
case of need. " If Russia made the same effort as 
certain other Powers of Western Europe," says a recent 
Governmental report, " she could without special effort 
maintain a permanent army of 2,500,000 soldiers. And 
as, further, the population of the Empire increases more 
rapidly than that of Western Europe, we may regard 
our reserve strength as absolutely inexhaustible." The 
financial exploits of M. Witte had given the Tsar a new 
war chest ; the extension of railways on the Western 
frontier, in Central Asia, and in the Far East, though 
it had burdened the exchequer, was supposed to have 
doubled the striking power of the State. The Russian 
, soldier was accounted among the best in the world ; * 

* " The Russian soldier has, perhaps, no equal. He combines the solidity 
of the German and the elan of the Frenchman ; he has the sobriety of the 
Spaniard and the resignation of the Turk. He is at once the best disciplined, 
the most enduring, and the most ingenious and clear-headed. With the 
admirable adaptiveness in handicraft of his countrymen, he is at will a car- 
penter, a navvy, a blacksmith, always ready in all the tasks of war as of 
peace." — Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu, "La France, La Russie, et L'Europe," 
p. 103. 



THE FINAL CRIME 179 

and with such a weapon in hand, backed by an expert 
civil service, and untrammelled by democratic institu- 
tions, the Tsardom was supposed to be invincible. The 
state of Europe to-day, and of a large part of Asia as 
well, is proof that this was the opinion not only of scare- 
mongering journalists, but of sober statesmen also. To 
official Russia we chiefly owe it that Europe has become 
an armed camp. It has afforded the only excuses for 
the perpetual militarist activity on the northern frontiers 
of India ; more than one increase of the British Navy 
has been openly justified by the growth of the Baltic 
and Black Sea Fleets. For ten years the whole policy 
of France has been diverted from its old libertarian 
aims, and enormous financial risks in the form of loans 
have been incurred, for the sake of a military alliance 
of which, if it had ever come into active operation, the 
whole penalty would have fallen upon the Republic, a 
discreditable bond she is only now beginning to shake 
off. The Dual Alliance has found its analogue in the 
Triple Alliance, and German militarism in particular 
has been confirmed and hardened by the combination 
of the two neighbouring Powers. Austria and the 
Balkan States have been kept in a turmoil of military 
preparation by constant fear of Russian designs ; 
Sweden and Norway have been subjected to repeated 
alarms ; and it seemed likely that there would be acute 
trouble over the advance of Russian influence in Persia, 
when Japan strode suddenly into the field, and pricked 
the bubble which had hypnotized all the nations of 
Europe. 

This failure might have been foreseen, however, by 
any one acquainted with Russian history. It used to be 
said that Russia was beaten in the Crimea, not by 
the Allies, but by her own administration ; and in 
the Turkish War the enormous efforts made in two 



180 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

campaigns might have failed but for the Roumanians. 
The nation has made great advances since then ; the State 
is in the main the same junta of men bent exclusively on 
maintaining their own power and property. Of them- 
selves, the Russian people are hardy and resourceful, 
but decidedly less aggressive than the Teuton and Latin 
races. The mujik is proverbially capable of bearing 
suffering, and proverbially prone to alternations of 
heroic effort and stolid inactivity. The nomad instinct 
conspires with the absence of the territorial principle in 
recruiting to lessen the shock of departure for a distant 
field and the strain of long absence, but at the same 
time to enfeeble the spirit which is miscalled patriotism. 
He signally lacks the pride and combativeness of the 
Japanese, and their extraordinary chivalry of self- 
sacrifice. He is less quick and clever, more enduring 
and common-sensible. Trained from birth to obedience, 
passivity, co-operation, and poverty, under the despotism 
of his father, of the mir, and of the police, his lack of 
initiative is a much graver fault in modern than it was 
in earlier conditions of warfare. And it is aggravated 
by another weakness for which his rulers are responsible 
— his lack of instruction. At the census of 1887 it was 
found that two- thirds of the Russian and over four -fifths 
of the Polish soldiery could neither read nor write ; and 
in 1895, out of nearly a million men who had attended 
the communal schools, only 24,000 had obtained the 
certificates entitling them to certain privileges in regard 
to military service. In high contrast with his German 
fellow, the Russian petty officer is usually very ignorant, 
and the direction of the army, thus lacking in intellectual 
reserves, tends to degenerate as a protracted campaign 
carries away draft after draft of its most instructed men. 
The oligarchy has found, when it is too late, that military 
railways and scientific fortifications are no substitute for 



THE FINAL CRIME 181 

the common schools on which the money ought to have 
been spent. 

u What the Russian soldier wants," said the great 
Polish banker and economist, Jean de Bloch, in his 
encyclopaedic work on modern warfare,* "is to raise his 
individuality, his intelligence, his energy, his faculty 
for decision, his ingenuity, his perseverance in pursuit 
of the proposed ends." But what place is there for in- 
dividuality and intelligence under the Russian system ? 
As in the economic so in the military sphere, the 
Tsardom has provoked developments ultimately incom- 
patible with its own power. " The development of the 
individuality of the soldier has become indispensable : 
the automaton is the worst possible agent in modern 
combat. It follows that the principle of obedience can 
no longer be the sole regulator of the relations between 
the officer and his subordinates. These relations 
formerly exacted only the unreasoned and blind execu- 
tion of orders, stifling the moral qualities of the man, 
de-individualizing him, and developing in him the fear 
of his chief. Dragomirov has said that such fear should 
be removed by a system which will exclude arbitrariness 
on the part of officers as a crime. But the present 
military laws impose very severe penalties for slight 
offences. Such is that which consists in sending the 
offender into disciplinary companies, where he is sub- 
mitted to corporal punishment for the least faults. A 
regime which sentences men to indefinite flogging, 
which allows them to be whipped every day, evidently 
invites abuses of authority. True, in time of peace, 
a soldier can only be sent to a disciplinary corps by 
virtue of a sentence ; but in time of war, the head of 

* " La Guerre," ii. 369, et seq. M. de Block's work and his interviews 
with the present Tsar were one of the influences that led to the summoning 
of The Hague Conference. Needless to say, the questions here discussed 
were not included in the Imperial programme. 



182 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

the regiment can send him without any authorization 
whatever. Under obligatory service, however, it is not 
reassuring to the citizens called to the colours that they 
have something besides the fire of the enemy to face. 
The army of 1877-78 was not constituted by obligatory 
service. Having adopted the principle of the fusion of 
classes, no trace of the system based on serfdom should 
be allowed to remain." * 

There is reason to believe that the old-time ignorance 
and passivity of the mujik are being modified by the 
very military training whose chief object was to keep 
him in subjection. A graver fact, whether from the 
military or the civil point of view, is the low level of 
education obtaining among the officers. This is in part 
an immediate result of State policy. Since the insur- 
rection of 1863 there have been very few Polish officers, 
and their advancement and even their admission to the 
military schools have been severely restricted, a bar the 
more unjust since obligatory service was established. 
The same is true of all Jews and Catholics ; and thus 
some of the most intelligent classes in the Empire are 
shut out from the military career. Protestants form 
only 3*7 per cent, of the whole army, but they con- 
tribute 14 per cent, of the generals, and Armenians 
make their way yet more successfully. Catholics are 
handicapped at every step. But this inequality of 
rights is a small evil compared with some others. 
Military society is a morbid growth at best ; where it 
lacks the corrective of public criticism and control, and 
the example of purity in the civil government, what 
wonder if it exhibits in a more aggravated degree the 
evils of "Eine Kleine Garnison"? The harvest of 
vice, gambling, and drunkenness in time of peace has 
been reaped in the ravaged towns and the camps of 

* De Bloch, ii. pp. 369-374. 



THE FINAL CRIME 183 

Manchuria. Theft and jealousy are two old evils among 
the staff of the Kussian army, and it is evident that the 
optimists who said they were nearly extinct had more 
faith than information. " There is so much hatred, 
envy, and cowardice in this wretched place," wrote Dr. 
Botkin, the Emperor's private physician, during the 
Turkish campaign, "that other sides of the human 
character are obliterated, and one suspects everything. 
I shall be glad to quit such a hell of pride, jealousy, 
and greed." So it is again, twenty-eight years later ; 
and as Dr. Botkin insisted that the guilty were not 
only those whom he directly implicated, so we too must 
insist that the chief responsibility lies with those who 
are responsible for the whole State machine. 

That the Eussians are a deeply humane people, their 
literature, their forms of religion, and many charac- 
teristics of their social life testify. The drawing of 
lots and departure of recruits are subjects of Eussian 
art which always appeal to popular sympathy. In his 
hatred of violence, especially in its military form, 
Tolstoy is a true representative of the nation. Nowhere 
in the world, indeed, has the refusal of military service 
assumed such large proportions as it has spontaneously 
taken among the humble peasantry of these vast prairies. 
The ancient innate tendency has been strengthened by 
an ever-growing perception that, whatever war can do 
for the few great men of the capital, it can bring no 
good to the mass of little people in the country. The 
Manchurian war was never popular ; it needed only to 
find that the Jap also is a man, and no monkey, to blow 
away the last illusion. Every week saw an addition to 
the suffering of those left at home, the fruitless losses 
of those left in the field. At last, there came the events 
of " Bloody Sunday " in St. Petersburg, of which one of 
the first and smallest incidents, the destruction by the 



1 84 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

soldiery of a picture of the Tsar carried in front of them 
by the peaceful strikers, is typical of all the rest. War 
abroad was seen to involve war at home ; the oligarchy 
cared as little about its own people as about the Japs. 
In every part of a land which has never been allowed 
to organize a Peace society the cry for Peace arose, 
wedded with a cry for Liberty. This is, indeed, the 
supreme claim which, in their struggle for freedom, the 
Russian people make upon the sympathy of the outer 
world, that its inevitable victory will add to the comity 
of nations a State pledged by its dearest memories and 
by its most cherished aims to walk in the path of justice 
and concord. 



PART II 
PIONEERS OF REVOLUTION 



CHAPTER XIV 

THE PROPAGANDISTS, 1870-74: NICHOLAS TCHAYKOVSKY'S 

NARRATIVE 

The conscious and concerted movement of revolt against 
the oligarchy that has now been actively maintained 
for a quarter of a century has undergone a very 
striking development, the character of which may 
perhaps be best seen as reflected in a few leading or 
typical personalities. This sketchy treatment of a 
subject so full of dramatic interest cannot be wholly 
satisfactory, but it will serve to give a better account, 
in some ways, than is otherwise available, both of the 
outward course and of the psychology of the movement. 
Broadly, it may be said to show, so far, two phases of 
about equal duration, divided by a short interval of 
exhaustion. The first phase, to which the name 
" Nihilism " was commonly but inaccurately attached, 
extended from 1870 to about 1885, and was, in the 
main, a movement of the younger intelligenzia, though 
some workmen and peasants and a few soldiers took part 
in it. The second phase, commencing about 1890, and 
reaching during the last few months the dimensions of 
a national rising, is no less distinctly marked by the 
part taken by the workmen, though these have been 
supported by a number of the educated class larger than 
ever before, and by an increasing susceptibility of the 
peasantry. 

187 



i88 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

The first of these two periods may again be divided 
into a time of preparation and missionary effort lasting 
for four or five years, and a time of open and increasingly 
violent struggle culminating in the adoption of terrorism 
as a policy, and ending in the practical extinction of the 
revolutionary organization by wholesale measures of 
governmental revenge. 

I have said something of the extravagant hopes with 
which the emancipation of the serfs was received, the 
corresponding disappointment when the insufficiency of 
that measure became evident, and the general reaction by 
which this disappointment was deepened and extended. 
The widening demand for freedom among the educated 
class, which sprang up in response to the new foreign 
influences and intellectual and commercial opportunities 
after the Crimean War, was met by peremptory refusal. 
Law staggered for a moment on infant legs, and then 
collapsed. The power and ramifications of the police 
were steadily extended. In the hands of Count Dmitri 
Tolstoy and M. Pobyedonostsev, the Holy Synod became 
a very Inquisition, the terror of Jews and heretics of 
every degree and kind. The zemstvos were reduced to im- 
potence ; the elective justices of the peace were replaced 
by police officers appointed by the Government. Com- 
merce, industry, education were harassed with absurd 
restrictions. Something of the corruption of officialdom 
came to light later on in the Turkish War. The city 
labourers found themselves face to face with the begin- 
nings of an unregulated factory system and yet for- 
bidden to engage in any protective organization. There 
was no nook or cranny of public or private life where the 
weight and degradation of arbitrary rule were not felt. 

Many influences, many characters and experiences, 
combined to qualify this first democratic revolutionary 
movement on Russian soil. The young men and women 



THE PROPAGANDISTS 189 

who " went to the people "' in the early seventies had 
grown up during the decade of Liberalism that followed 
the Crimean War ; their teachers were, in many cases, 
the active Kadicals of that period. But there is a wide 
difference in spirit between the two generations — the 
elder individualistic and now disillusioned, the younger 
full of a robust faith in the common people and con- 
fident that the newer socialistic teaching of Germany 
and France could be applied to native circumstances. 
Scepticism is the constant and all but inevitable out- 
come of a regime like that of the Russo-Byzantine 
oligarchy. The early " Nihilist," as Turgeniev pictured 
him, was just the more courageous and aggressive 
sceptic, mainly anxious about freedom of intelligence 
and the rights of the individual. "A Nihilist," said 
Bazar ov's friend (in " Fathers and Sons "), " is a man 
who submits to no authority, who accepts not a single 
principle upon faith merely, however high such a 
principle may stand in the eyes of men." Bazarov 
himself inveighs against art, romantic and philosophic 
abstractions, as well as against aristocrats and officials ; 
recommends Stoicism and Biichner's " Force and 
Matter " ; and finally falls a victim to his beloved 
'ologies, dying, with the words, " I have sworn to revolt, 
and I do revolt ! " upon his lips, from typhus caught in 
making a post-mortem examination. 

It is rather to Tchernichevsky's romance, " What's to 
be Done ? " written in prison in 1863, that one must go 
for an authentic account of the Stat oVdme of the student 
class, male and female, who called themselves " the new 
generation," and tried in their own persons to lay down 
amid these unpromising conditions the bases of " the 
new life." It is one of the most extraordinary ebulli- 
tions of glorified egotism of which history tells ; but, at 
least in the emphasis upon social relations, personal 



190 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

honesty and goodness, and, especially, the 'needs of 
awakened womanhood, there is something much more 
human in it all than in the unattractive if pathetic 
figure of Bazarov, the nineteenth-century Ishmael. The 
economic problem, the supreme need of popular educa- 
tion, the duty of the favourites of fortune to devote 
themselves to the awakening of the mind of the people 
— these were at first the dominant, almost the sole 
ideas ; it was only when the innocent educational efforts 
of the propagandists were thwarted and punished that 
they began to develop a political programme. Gradually 
speculative Radicalism became merged in a mildly 
Socialistic apostolate, a necessarily secret propaganda 
in favour of freedom of speech and publication, public 
justice, personal security, the abolition of " adminis- 
trative " exile, and the calling of a national assembly ; 
a " sort of cult," as M. Leroy-Beaulieu calls it, " of 
which the god, deaf and unfeeling, is the people," a 
" sort of Church kept together by the bond of love to 
that misjudged deity, and whose law is hatred of its 
persecutors." 

I have named Tchernichevsky ; but there was a 
teacher, less known, perhaps, to the outer world, but 
more influential in the Russian movement, who united 
in himself these two generations. Colonel Peter Lavrov 
was born at Melekhovo, in the Pskov government, in 
1823, and died in Paris in February, 1900. Like 
Tolstoy's, therefore, his life covered practically the 
whole period of the growth of modern Russia. He was 
a colonel of artillery and professor of mathematics at 
the Artillery College in St. Petersburg, and a member 
of the douma (municipal council) and zemstvo, at the 
time of Karakosov's attempt upon the life of Alexander 
II. in April, 1866. The attempt was followed by dra- 
conian measures taken under the direction of Muraviev, 





PETEK LAVJROV. 



PETER KROPOTKIN. 






L. SHICHKO. 



D. SOSKICE. 



L. GOLDENBERG. 



THE PROPAGANDISTS 191 

who had been called to St. Petersburg from the Governor- 
Generalship of Vilna and given dictatorial powers ; and, 
among other Radicals, Lavrov was arrested, letters and 
poems which were considered compromising having been 
found in his house. For nine months he was kept in 
close confinement in the military prison of St. Peters- 
burg. Forbidden any opportunity of open-air exercise, 
the only times in which he saw the outside of his prison 
were the three or four occasions on which he was con- 
veyed to the Fortress of St. Peter and St. Paul to 
appear before the commission of inquiry which sat 
there ; and, as he told me, he was only allowed to see 
his mother and his little daughter, and then only in 
presence of the military Governor of St. Petersburg. 
He was confronted with no witnesses, and no charge 
of conspiracy was brought against him, but he was 
found guilty of having published "subversive ideas" 
and shown sympathy with men of " criminal tendencies." 
For these offences he was sentenced to a long term of 
" administrative " exile, not, as has been erroneously 
stated, in Siberia, but in the government of Vologda. 
At three small places in this province he was detained 
for three years. In 1870, with the assistance of the 
bold and able revolutionist Lopatin, he escaped to the 
capital, and after a short stay in hiding there and in 
the country, having obtained a sham passport (made 
out in the name of a doctor who was afterwards impli- 
cated in revolutionary activity, and died in Siberia), he 
successfully crossed the frontier. Lavrov was not in 
any way a politician of the barricade, and he told me 
in after years that he did not know anything at all of 
Tchernichevsky's projects, and, indeed, did not believe 
he had any serious plans of revolutionary action. Safely 
beyond reach of the Russian police, Lavrov settled down 
in Paris, where he afterwards lived, with the exception 



192 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

of the years 1874-77, when, first in Zurich, and then 
in London, he directed the Russian Socialist review 
Forward (Vperied), and some months in 1882, when 
he suffered expulsion from France in consequence of a 
paper issued under his own name and that of Yera 
Zassulitch, appealing to the public of Europe to send 
help to the Russian political suspects, then suffering 
in prison or in exile. All this time he was actively 
engaged in anthropological research. His chief works 
were the early ' ' Historical Letters " (a chapter of which, 
on " Progress," was published in French under the title 
"Le Devenir Social"), which made him universally known 
in Russia, and a very large " History of Thought." In 
1882 he allied himself with the Narodnaya Volya party, 
becoming one of their honoured chiefs and one of the 
directors of the "Messenger of the People's Will." 
Politically he stood as a Socialist propagandist between 
the Anarchist followers of Bakunin and the purely 
political revolutionists. 

About four years before his death I visited this 
" grand old man" of the Russian revolutionary move- 
ment in his tiny book-lined flat on the sky-line of the 
Rue St. Jacques, a brisk drive south of the Seine over 
the cobbles of the Latin Quarter and a dozen steps 
across a sunny courtyard bringing me to his humble 
stairs. For the first time I found a Russian revolu- 
tionist who had succeeded in reaching a hale, hearty, 
and peaceful old age. After thirty years spent under 
the ban, he remained true to all his early ideals, and 
busy, so far as might be, in furthering them. It is 
curious that in England he should have remained so 
little known. It is true that he was but a short time 
in this country, and he had lost the little knowledge 
of our tongue which he then obtained. Since then, 
too, a younger generation of the movement — the 



THE PROPAGANDISTS 193 

generation of Stepniak and Kropotkin, of Volkhovsky 
and Tchaykovsky — had claimed public attention. But 
Lavrov, though he had outlived many of his pupils, 
and was past middle life when the meteoric career of 
Stepniak was beginning, enjoyed universal honour 
among his outlawed countrymen. 

The character of the propagandist crusade with 
which the long years of revolt opened, has been so 
grossly misrepresented, and it so well deserves a closer 
understanding, that I have thought it best that its 
origin and its short and tragic course should be ex- 
plained by one of the few men yet surviving who 
took a responsible part in it ; and I am fortunate in 
being able to record the following reminiscences of Mr. 
Nicholas Tchaykovsky, a leader who gave his name to 
the most important group of these populist missionaries, 
and who has been for twenty years past a director of 
the Eussian Free Press Fund, and one of the honoured 
veterans among the political refugees in London. 

"My memories," says M. Tchaykovsky, "go back 
to the time previous to the Emancipation. When I 
was very young, my father, who had been an official, 
moved to my mother's estate, which lay in the province 
of Viatka. As a boy, I made myself at home with the 
peasantry in general and the boys of the village in 
particular, and was known as ' 'Kolya,' for the days of 
serfdom a very uncommon, though to me very pleasant, 
familiarity. I slightly remember the Crimean War, the 
alarm about the position of Sevastopol, the excitement 
in local Society over the provision of hospitals, the 
calling-up of volunteers, the wave of patriotism in 
official and even in non-official circles ; but I was too 
young fully to understand these things. As I grew 
older I fell entirely under the influence of my mother, 
who was a devoutly religious woman, and who taught 





194 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

me the elements of language, arithmetic, and the 
Gospels, but allowed me considerable freedom other- 
wise. On the other hand, the peasant life, on its 
primitive poetic side, fascinated me so much that, when, 
later on, in 1862, I had to leave home for school, I felt 
as if I had lost a vital organ. This first school was in 
the town of Viatka, about four hundred miles away. 
Life in the house of some distant relatives did not pre- 
sent any interest, nor did the school, where I remained 
for two years, returning home each summer to spend 
the three or four months of the holidays. Those 
summer vacations are among my brightest recollections. 
"After this, in 1864, I accompanied my elder 
brother, who was entering the University, to St. Peters- 
burg, where I continued my studies in one of the 
newest and best of the Grammar-schools of the city — 
the ' Seventh/ I recall the decree of Liberation. For 
two or three years previously, mysterious rumours were 
constantly reaching us, and formed matter of talk 
among the peasants, about the freedom (volyd) that 
was soon to come to them. There were signs of a 
rising spirit of independence, too, among the serfs 
and the personal servants of the manor house ; and I 
remember one or two cases of these latter running 
away, under the impulse of a craving for a freer life, 
hiding for a fortnight in the nearest woods, and being 
severely flogged after their return, and threatened with 
being sent into obligatory military service, which they 
thought the greatest misfortune of all. Sometimes 
they would say : ' Wait awhile, my boy ! Your people 
won't lord it over us for long ! We shall be free, and 
you will be left to do everything yourselves/ When 
the actual news of the Liberation came, however, I was 
full of joy for my friends, for, though I could never 
erase from my mind the memory of hearing, while 



THE PROPAGANDISTS 195 

passing through our village, the moans of men who 
were being flogged for failing to pay their portion of 
grain into the public granaries, and of my father's 
explanations of the necessity of such punishment, I 
should never again have to suffer that painful impres- 
sion. I also remember the formal reading of the polo- 
geniye to the elders of the village in the presence of the 
starshina, my father, and several local officials. They 
all looked very much overwhelmed with the gravity of 
the occasion, and, at the same time, rather astonished 
and confused ; and I was often reminded of the signs 
of this mood afterwards when I heard of peasant 
disturbances on account of measures to enforce the 
land redemption payments. The explanation was that 
the peasants considered that the land ought to belong 
to them, and certainly they expected that it would be 
given to them along with personal freedom. So they 
were dumfounded when they found in the pologeniye 
something quite different. They never could reconcile 
themselves to this disappointment, and down to to-day 
they have stuck to their original belief that, sooner or 
later, the land would belong to the people. 

" While at the Grammar-school in St. Petersburg I 
lived with my brother and mixed with his friends and 
fellows of the University. Among them was one very 
characteristic Russian figure, a highly gifted ecclesi- 
astical scholar who, after having passed brilliantly 
through the Ecclesiastical Academy in the capital, was 
sent abroad to study philosophy. After two or three 
years in Germany he became a philosophic rebel, fell 
into something like despair, and every now and again 
sought oblivion in drink. His faults did not lessen his 
attractiveness to a younger generation whom, in his 
excited mood, he scolded severely for being superficial 
and not serious enough in their studies, and for being 



196 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

ignorant of philosophy. He influenced me considerably, 
and it was on his advice that my brother put the 
expositions of Auguste Comte's philosophy by J. S. Mill 
and G. H. Lewes into my hands. I was only fourteen 
years old when I began to study that precious book ; 
and it fascinated me to such an extent that, while 
sitting in school, I longed to get back to our lodgings 
and my chosen reading. The more I progressed, the 
more I was absorbed. This study powerfully affected 
my mind and systematized my ideas ; but it certainly 
overstrained me, and once, after reading far into the 
morning, I was found lying senseless on the floor. 

" I have said that my school was one of the best in 
St. Petersburg. The teachers of natural science and 
history were particularly able men and influenced us 
greatly, especially the former. He was a very con- 
scientious man and treated us very kindly. We used 
to visit him privately in the evenings in his room in 
the school building, and often had delightful talks 
about the life that awaited us, the duties of honest 
and progressive men, and the meaning of various social 
and scientific forces. He inspired us with love for 
science, and warned us against superficiality in any- 
thing. He also made frequent botanical excursions 
with us in the outskirts of the city. To the teacher 
of history we were particularly indebted for training in 
systematic study. He taught us to make abstracts of 
everything we read, and to grasp the subject not only 
in detail but in its broad outlines and relations. We 
had also a very good teacher of literature, who regarded 
it and taught it as the consideration of the evolution 
of national aspirations personified and dramatized by 
the chief writers of a country. We studied with him 
Pushkin, Gogol, Nekrassov, Turgeniev, Tolstoy, and 
others allowed by the curriculum, but he also advised 



THE PROPAGANDISTS 197 

us of other helpful writers like Pissarev, Dobrolubov, 
Tchernichevsky. He was no pedant, but led us to the 
fundamental idea of the author we were studying : for 
instance, in * Dead Souls/ we quite understood the 
meaning of the satire on pre-reform Russian Society, 
which arose from Gogol's aspiration towards a better 
and more equitable state of affairs. We were expected 
in our essays not only to show a knowledge of general 
facts, but to show the fundamental idea and to criticise 
the actors of the piece and the dramatic dispositions 
of its various elements. The natural outcome of such 
exercises was the development of aspirations to live to 
help in shaping the destiny of our age against all 
existing routine, and of a sense of reality as contrasted 
with the false romanticism of the older schools. 

" The first germs of the conscious revolutionary 
spirit I also received in this school. It began with our 
studies of the French Revolution. I remember very 
clearly how, after having read Mignet's history, I was 
able to tell the story of the Revolution so picturesquely 
that for half an hour my class and teacher were spell- 
bound, and how, after the lesson was over, several of 
my schoolfellows came and grasped my hand and con- 
gratulated me. That was my first act of propaganda ; 
and one of those fellows was a public man who has 
taken a prominent part in the recent events. 

" In 1868 I entered the University of St. Peters- 
burg in the faculty of natural science and mathematics, 
after having taken the gold medal at the Grammar- 
school. I fell at once into the circle of my school- 
fellows, and we began to read and discuss Herbert 
Spencer's Essays, sitting, on two or three nights a 
week, far into the small hours. This was the initia- 
tion into the next period of my life. A few months 
after entering, I was elected by my class to visit our 



198 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

impecunious fellows in order to distribute certain dona- 
tions entrusted to us by philanthropic societies. This was 
my first public duty. I discovered some of them in most 
miserable circumstances, unable to attend lectures for 
want of money, though formally registered as students. 
Still, we were not allowed to have our permanent fund 
for helping such cases. At Christmas of that year, 
student disturbances took place in the University and 
other higher educational institutions. It was considered 
obligatory for all who acted for the common interest to 
attend the students' meetings ; and I hardly missed 
one, though there were sometimes two or three a day 
in different parts of the town. The origin of the move- 
ment was the craving of students for active public life 
amongst themselves, taking shape in a demand for per- 
mission for a students' fund to maintain a library and 
restaurant, which would naturally imply the right of 
meeting, then recently withdrawn. As a rule, in those 
gatherings there were, among the speakers, two or three 
like S. G-. Netchayev, who saw the insufficiency of these 
demands and the futility of any attempt to secure 
students' rights and liberties without altering the 
general political condition of the country. So early as 
1869, therefore, we began to understand the actual 
place of University life in the common life of the 
country. The authorities paid little attention to this 
agitation ; but, after Christmas, the University decided 
to make all of those who took part in the meetings sign 
an undertaking that in future they would obey the 
regulations of the University. Netchayev and his 
followers said, ' Leave the University ! ' But I signed 
the rules, not without scruples, together with the rest ; 
and we found our justification in a firm resolution to 
use our University life to prepare ourselves for a serious 
effort to bring about substantial social and political 



THE PROPAGANDISTS 199 

reforms. From that moment to my last days in St. 
Petersburg my time was always divided into a series of 
efforts — first the social and political reading that seemed 
indispensable as preparation for a useful public career, 
and, secondly, various attempts to organize ourselves, 
with others of the same mind, in a united and effective 
body. One of the first steps in this direction was taken 
in my first year at the University, when we undertook 
to organize a school for teaching artisans' children too 
poor to attend the ordinary schools. It was in this 
effort in 1869 that I first met Sophia Perovsky, who 
was then hardly sixteen years old, and Madame Korba 
{nee Meinhardt ; she was then about twenty years old, 
but already married ; she is, I believe, still alive in 
Eastern Siberia). While maintaining this school, we 
gave more and more thought to our combined studies 
of social subjects, reading papers on such subjects as 
public education, the working of the zemstvos, the 
history of revolutionary movements, and so on. Then 
there was another more serious development. After 
the students' movement, in which Netchayev's agitation 
was mixed, he tried to draw us into his conspiracy. 
We were not satisfied with his methods and ideas, how- 
ever ; they seemed to us coercive and Jesuitical. In 
our further efforts we always kept Netchayev's example 
before us as the opposite of what we ought to do. 
Above all, we thought we must base our organization on 
a full understanding and on absolute freedom to take 
part with full knowledge of the possible consequences. 

" In the spring of 1869, there was formed in St. 
Petersburg a more serious circle, consisting of only five 
persons — Serdukov, then well known as the first to 
commence educational propaganda among the working 
men, Mark Natonson, a man of powerful character, 
Alexandrayev — these three were medical students and 



200 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

librarians of the students' library — myself, and another, 
a technological student, who afterwards left the move- 
ment. Thus three principal higher-educational institu- 
tions were represented. This was the nucleus of the 
so-called Tchaykovsky circle, which was very soon 
connected with a female circle consisting of the Korni- 
lovs, Perovsky, Obodovsky, and other female higher- 
course students. Our aim was to bring about a union 
of the advanced elements among the students first 
of St. Petersburg, and afterwards all over Russia, 
and then to proceed to make connections among the 
workers and the peasants and gradually prepare a revo- 
lutionary upheaval. Yes ! we were conscious of this 
aim from the beginning ; we called our work the pre- 
paration of revolutionary cadres, the creation of an 
intelligent democracy (narodnya intelligenzia). Another 
and separate circle, that called after Dolgushin, though 
it came out with a proclamation before anything directly 
revolutionary had been done by us, had a very short 
existence. Dolgushin was one of Netchayev's pupils, 
was imprisoned at the same time, and after his release 
formed a circle which, after having issued certain pro- 
clamations, was extinguished, its chief members dying 
in the central prisons or in Siberia. One of Dolgushin 's 
chief colleagues was an old Grammar-school mate of 
mine. 

"Our method was to create a series of small circles 
in various parts of the country for common studies 
and for supplying books and other information from 
the centres like St. Petersburg or Moscow. We 
took particular care to maintain and cultivate the con- 
nections of our members with their old homes and 
countrymen, as this local patriotism often afforded 
the most useful introductions. You understand that in 
Russia co-operative house-keeping was and is common, 



THE PROPAGANDISTS 201 

especially among students and workmen, and these ' local 
communes ' (zemlyachestvos) were our best recruiting- 
grounds. Through them our circles could be conveni- 
ently connected with provincial groups of a preparatory 
nature to whom we undertook to supply the best books 
at that time in circulation, original and translated, at 
half-price and on credit. Two of our number were 
librarians of the students' Medical Academy and had 
special facilities in this direction. We found this a 
strong practical method of keeping a large number of 
groups of the most intelligent and energetic men 
throughout the country in touch and co-operation. In 
fact, this was the first large organization of the kind 
that ever existed in Eussia. It certainly prepared the 
ground for a new current of public opinion. The 
carrying-on of this systematic work on a pre-arranged 
plan led to the organization of secret students' con- 
gresses and to tours of visitation in the provinces. 
Summer settlements also served our purpose very well. 
Kussian students commonly spend their summer vaca- 
tions either by accepting private engagements as tutors 
to younger candidates for schools and universities or, 
if they have well-to-do relations in the country, they 
disperse, and enjoy themselves in sport and 1 amusements. 
We objected to this custom, arguing that we, children 
of a trodden-down nation, brought up at the expense of 
the labour of the peasants and workmen, had no right 
to waste our time in this easy fashion, that it was our 
solemn duty to use all our spare hours in preparing 
for the work of emancipation. So, for instance, we 
cautiously gathered together a score of picked young 
men and women, found a large datcha (summer villa), 
in the outskirts of the town, and settled there in 
company fashion — men in one half of the house and 
women in the other. We agreed upon a common plan 



202 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

of reading together selected books on political economy, 
history, and psychology, studying separately in our 
rooms in the forenoons, and discussing the studied 
subjects in our common hall after our modest table- 
d'hote in the afternoon. We were full of enthusiasm in 
working out our common ideas and shaping our plans 
for future action. In not a few cases the ties of com- 
radeship thus formed lasted till death, and mutual 
confidence became the foundation-stone of confraternity. 
Thus there was something more than an organization of 
political conspirators ; there were bonds of true brother- 
hood, which, in the terrible years that followed, had to 
bear all sorts of trial. Larger organizations were formed 
in the later periods of our political growth, but they 
were never proof against difference and division as was 
that original nucleus of idealist pioneers, who decided 
from the very first days of their public life to devote 
themselves completely to the cause of freeing their 
country from political and economic slavery. 

" Meanwhile, our central circle had grown to twenty 
or more men and women. Among those of them who 
played an important part in the subsequent movement 
I may name especially Sergius Kravchinsky (Stepniak), 
Sophia Perovsky, Dmitri Klements, Felix Volkhovsky, 
Leonidas Shichko, Hermann Lopatin, N. Cherushin, 
S. Klatchko, S. Sinyegub, three sisters V., A., and L. 
Kornilov, Miss Obodovsky, Peter Kropotkin, M. Ku- 
prianov, F. Lermontov, and L. Tikhomirov. At the 
end of 1872 we had quite a small army of picked men 
and women among the intelligent youth, organized in 
influential groups, not only in St. Petersburg, but in 
Moscow, Kiev, Odessa, and Kharkov, with smaller 
groups in Tula, Orel, Viatka, Perm, Saratov, Samara, 
Eostov, Vilna, Minsk, and other towns. Among the 
books we distributed were those of Lassalle — that was 




a mujik, Yasnaya Poly ana. 




AN EVENING PARTY. 
From the pointing of V. G. Makovsky in the Treliakov Gallery. 



THE PROPAGANDISTS 203 

the beginning of German Socialist teaching in Russia, 
Marx came later — Tchernichevsky, Dobrolubov, Lav- 
rov, and Flerovsky, Louis Blanc on 'The Right of 
Labour' and 'The Revolution of '48/ Robert Owen, 
Darwin, Herbert Spencer — the ' Essays/ ' First Prin- 
ciples/ and the ' Biology ' — and histories of the Labour 
Movement in England and other countries. We also 
compiled and issued books for workmen, some of which, 
like ' The Clever Mechanic/ have been reprinted over 
and over again ; others being a free translation of the 
tale of ' A French Peasant/ by Erkmann and Chatrian, 
a ' History of Pugachev's Rising/ and various ' Revolu- 
tionary Songs/ 

" My first arrest, which took place in the spring of 
1871, was connected with our publishing efforts. One 
of us had been sent abroad to establish a permanent 
printing-office in Switzerland, in order to supply us with 
suitable clandestine literature, as we foresaw that the 
censorship would soon take strict measures to suppress 
most of the best books which we could circulate openly. 
A letter from this comrade addressed to me was inter- 
cepted ; and I was arrested in one of the summer 
camps I have described. The police and gendarmes 
were quite surprised, on coming to arrest one suspect, 
to find him in the company of a score of others, and, 
naturally, paid special attention to all of these, taking 
down their names and other particulars. I was im- 
prisoned l at the Chain Bridge/ as the political police 
department (then still the notorious * Third Section ') 
was called at that time, and there I lay for three 
months. This prison was used for the preliminary 
detention of political and religious suspects under in- 
vestigation. Here I first learned the torture of doing 
nothing for twenty-four hours per day, and of being 
watched day and night by a piercing eye through the 



204 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

'Judas,' the nervous excitement produced by solitary 
incarceration, and the delight of first receiving a secret 
note from comrades outside through a bribed jailer. 

" On being liberated, I went straight to my friends 
and continued to work as before. My second arrest, 
about a year later, was caused by suspicion of the 
secret police that I was organizing a secret congress 
of advanced students from all the university towns. I 
used, at that time, to make a regular search in my room 
every night before going to bed and to hide any com- 
promising papers, notes, or addresses I had about me. 
So, when the police visited me on the ominous night, they 
found nothing except a paper on students' congresses 
written by some of my friends and left in my room in 
my absence, without my knowledge. They tried by all 
means to find proofs of my authorship of this paper, but 
failed ; and they reluctantly released me for want of 
evidence, but with the firm intention of presently find- 
ing me guilty of ' criminal activity.' When we next 
learned that my arrest was contemplated, it was decided 
that I must disappear ' underground ' — to live with a 
false passport or none at all. I again turned to the 
provinces. 

" The revolutionary cadres were now ready and 
eager for a field in which to apply their energies. They 
even began to despise the old student discussions. 
Spontaneous efforts had already been made in St. 
Petersburg, Moscow, and elsewhere to establish com- 
munications with the workmen and peasants, with the 
object, in the first place, of teaching the elements of 
grammar and science. Some of our comrades, like 
Serdukov, Cherushin, Sinyegoub, and Stepniak, went 
among the artels * of bricklayers, navvies, and carpenters, 

* Productive co-operative Societies, having usually their living-quarters 
in common. 



THE PROPAGANDISTS 205 

and into the spinning and weaving mills ; and, at the 
same time, we held evening classes in our own rooms, to 
which scores of workmen came daily, at first to learn 
the elements of reading, writing, and arithmetic, and 
afterwards to discuss books and problems that interested 
them. Thus we found a number of intelligent young 
peasants and artisans, who, in turn, formed special 
circles to carry on the work among factory hands and 
their rural compatriots. When this stage had been 
reached, the cry, f Go to the people ! ' arose to give a new 
extension to our campaign. The outcome is shown in 
the famous report of the Minister of Justice, Count 
Pahlen, in 1874, according to which traces of Socialistic 
propaganda had been discovered in thirty-six provinces 
of the Empire. 

" After these connections with the workmen had 
been established, I felt that my own further efforts in 
the organization of the intellectual youth were finished 
for a time ; and I undertook to write a number of 
books and other publications for circulation among the 
peasantry. For this purpose, and because there were 
threats of my being arrested in St. Petersburg, I went 
into the provinces. But once started on this under- 
taking, my mind was freed from the pressure of the 
actual and practical conditions in which reformative 
work had to be done in Kussia at that time, and the 
ineffectiveness of ordinary political and socialistic pro- 
paganda among a deeply religious peasantry, still 
hopeful of benefits from above, was one of the stumbling- 
blocks which forced us to think over the whole situation. 
While living in the province of Kiev and in Voronezh, 
I met some friends with whom I began to work upon 
the rather Utopian idea of formulating a new religion, 
and we were soon compelled to transfer ourselves with 
this stupendous mission, for the sake of more effective 



2o6 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

experiment, to the steppes of Kansas. After two years 
of struggling agricultural life on the American prairies, 
and an interval of arduous employment in a shipyard 
and a sugar factory in Philadelphia, I returned to 
Europe, landing in Liverpool in May, 1878. Soon 
afterwards I settled in Paris, and became a corre- 
spondent of one of the Moscow Liberal papers. There 
was no lack of comrades then in Paris, mostly ' invalids ' 
of the terrorist campaign of the Narodnaya Volya. I 
tried to resume my former work in the movement, but 
found it much more difficult than I had thought. 
Political struggle in Russia was reduced for the time to 
an acute duel between the ' Executive Committee ' and 
the despotism, and I saw no earthly use in my returning 
to Russia, being little fit for the special effort it required. 
I was sent to London for the sake of more quiet and 
regular life in June of 1880, and have stayed here since, 
save for occasional visits to the Continent." 



CHAPTER XV 

the tsar's vengeance: mme. kovalsky's narrative 

Mr. Tchaykovsky's narrative sufficiently indicates the 
innocence and generosity of this outburst of democratic 
revivalism, in which, in course of the year 1874, over 
two thousand missionaries, mainly of the educated 
class, were engaged. Had I space I should supplement 
it by other narratives that would make equally clear 
the strength of character, resourcefulness, energy, and 
capacity for suffering and sacrifice, shown by many of 
them in their crusade among the peasantry and work- 
men, and in the desperate struggle in which they were 
involved directly the Government discovered that it was 
seriously challenged. No modern movement that I 
know of can show such a record of personal heroism. 
All of these men and women were abandoning their 
home life, their worldly position and prospects, and 
risking their individual safety. Some of them were 
wealthy and of the noble class ; they, too, gave every- 
thing to the cause. Voinaralsky, a justice of the peace, 
about forty years of age, spent all his means, some 
£4000, on the propaganda ; he and Kovalik — president 
of the board of justices of the Tchernigov province, a 
landlord and a man of great capacity, who acted 
similarly — were arrested and, after imprisonment in the 
St. Petersburg fortress, the Kharkov central prison, of 

ill-fame, and the Kara prison, were exiled to Sredne 

207 



208 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

Kolymsk in the extreme north-east of Siberia. Prince 
Peter Kropotkin, already known as a geologist and 
explorer, risked everything to give lessons to the work- 
men of St. Petersburg. He was at length caught in 
the guise of a house painter, and incarcerated in the 
fortress. The circumstances of his escape are well- 
known ; and now that we can read his own " Memoirs," 
I need say no more of this delightful personality than 
that Russia's loss has been England's abundant gain. 
Dmitri Lisogoub, a large landowner of Tchernigov, 
whom Stepniak in " Underground Russia " dubbed " the 
saint of the party," gave up the whole of his fortune, 
some £40,000, to the movement. Though he had taken 
no part in terrorist action, he was hung at Odessa 
in August, 1879. Sophia Perovsky, one of the first 
members of the " Tchaykovtsy," and afterwards one of 
the Tsaricides, was the daughter of the Grovernor- 
General of St. Petersburg and niece of the Minister of 
Public Instruction. This list could be easily and con- 
siderably extended ; but I would rather emphasize the 
intellectual and moral strength of the movement. The 
feebler enthusiasts were soon shed ; and, as time and 
the first burst of hopefulness passed, the remainder 
grew more practical, definite, and militant. Realizing 
the ignorance and inertia of the masses of the people, 
they did not become any the less men of the people — 
the restoration of the land was, indeed, one of the 
cardinal points of their programme — but they were 
forced to recognize that greater liberty was a condition 
of success in their agitation ; and their diversion to a 
direct struggle against the Government was confirmed 
by the cruel measures taken to suppress their educational 
campaign. 

Official reports give the number of persons arrested 
on political charges or suspicion from March, 1873, to 



THE TSAR'S VENGEANCE 209 

December, 1876, as 1611 ; while the number actually 
tried in 1877-79 was 2348, without counting "adminis- 
trative " cases.* In the earlier years named, the only 
offences alleged consisted in taking part in the mild 
radical propaganda I have described. The classic 
instance is the "trial of the 193," in October, 1877. 
Over a thousand arrests had been made ; after imprison- 
ment for from one to four years, eight hundred of the 
victims had been liberated, it being impossible to bring 
any definite charge against them. Before the trial, 
eighty of the prisoners had died, committed suicide, or 
become insane in gaol, and five more died during the 
first few days of the process. These bare figures, which 
are typical of many that could be cited, must serve to 
indicate the horrible prison conditions to which the 
revolutionary propagandists were subjected. Of the 
193 men and women actually brought to trial, only 
forty were found guilty and sentenced (one to death, 
the others to imprisonment and exile) ; so that 960 
admittedly innocent lives had been seriously injured or 
altogether destroyed in course of this one raid in the 
metropolis. " Admittedly innocent : " yet half of those 
acquitted were immediately re-arrested and exiled " ad- 
ministratively." "Almost every one of the persons 
punished and found not guilty," says Mr. Kennan, 
" ultimately become a revolutionist ; and before 1885 
more than one-third of them were in Siberia and two of 
them — Zheliabov and S. Perovsky — had perished on 
the scaffold with the blood of Alexander II. on their 
hands." 

In the hope of enabling the reader more easily to 
realize these events I resort again to the biographic 
method, taking three figures characteristic of the middle 

* Malchinsky, "Review of the Revolutionary Socialist Movement in 
Russia," quoted by Tikhomirov, " La Russie Politique et Sociale." 

P 



2io RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

period of the " Nihilist " movement before it had 
entered upon the " terrorist " stage, all three now 
happily enjoying the free air of the West after long 
years of imprisonment and exile. 

Madame Katherine Breshkovsky's story of her 
childhood is a variant of that recited in the last chapter. 
The daughter of a nobleman, she grew up amid evi- 
dences of the misery of the peasants, on the one hand, 
and influences of Western thought, not then under the 
censor's ban, on the other. Full of the fresh enthusiasm 
of the Emancipation days, she opened a village school, 
witnessed the disappointment of the people who thought 
they were to get land as well as liberty, saw them 
flogged into a less exacting frame of mind. So she 
became a reformer. In St. Petersburg, with her mother, 
she met Radicals in Society and out of it, and, returning 
to the country, resumed her teaching work among the 
peasants. Here she married a liberal landowner. Hus- 
band and wife presently fell under police surveillance 
for their activity in zemstvo work, while Mme. Bresh- 
kovsky's father was deposed from office without trial, 
and some of their friends were exiled to Siberia. The 
news of the Netchayev trial in 1871 reached these 
people like an alarm bell. " I was at this time twenty- 
six years old. My husband, like me, had a whole life 
before him, and therefore I felt that I must speak 
frankly. I asked him if he were willing to suffer exile 
or death in this cause of freedom. He said that he was 
not. Then I left him." 

Mme. Breshkovsky joined a revolutionary circle in 
Kiev, one of the most active centres of the movement, 
and at once entered upon propagandist work, passing 
from village to village in peasant dress, gathering little 
groups in the log-cabins, and speaking to them in 
parable and homely argument. At length she was 



THE TSAR'S VENGEANCE 211 

tracked down and conveyed to St. Petersburg, where she 
lay in prison for two years, to be brought to trial with 
"the 193." For a protest against the unfairness of 
the trial, her sentence was increased to five years in 
Siberia with hard labour, with exile for life. In those 
days there was no Siberian railway, and the journey 
by the great post-road, jolting telega by day and filthy 
etape by night, was an experience calculated to break 
any but the most resolute spirit. This spirit was not 
broken. After ten months in the prison of Kara, Mme. 
Breshkovsky was transferred to the village of Barguzin 
in Trans-Baikalia. In the summer of 1881, in company 
with three other " politicals," she made an unsuccessful 
attempt to reach the Pacific coast, and after various 
adventures, was captured, brought back to Kara, and 
sentenced to four years' hard labour and forty strokes 
of the lash. The latter punishment was not carried out. 
Here she suffered with the other women politicals in 
the repeated :s hunger strikes," but before the culmin- 
ating incident of the flogging of Mme. Sigida, Mme. 
Breshkovsky was removed to the wretched Buriat 
hamlet of Selenginsk, near the Chinese frontier to the 
south of Lake Baikal, where Mr. Kennan saw her in 
October, 1885. She was then, he writes,* "a lady 
perhaps thirty-five years of age, with a strong intellectual 
face, a frank, unreserved manner, and sympathies that 
seemed to be impulsive and generous. Her face bore 
traces of much suffering, and her thick dark wavy hair, 
which had been cut short in prison at the mines, was 
streaked here and there with grey ; but neither hard- 
ship, nor exile, nor penal servitude had been able to 
break her brave, finely tempered spirit or to shake her 
convictions of honour and duty. She was, as I soon 
discovered, a woman of much cultivation, spoke French, 

* "Siberia aud the Exile System,' ' ii 121, 122. 



212 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

German, and English, and was a fine musician. She 
was now under direct supervision and control of the 
local chief of police ; there was not another educated 
woman, so far as I know, within a hundred miles in 
any direction ; she received from the Government an 
allowance of a dollar and a half a week for her support ; 
her correspondence was under police control ; she was 
separated for life from her family and friends ; and she 
had, it seemed to me, absolutely nothing to look forward 
to except a few years more or less of privation, and at 
last burial in a lonely graveyard beside the Selenga 
River. Almost the last words she said to me were, 
' Mr. Kennan, we may die in exile, and our children may 
die in exile, and our children's children may die in 
exile, but something must come of it at last ! ' I have 
never seen nor heard of Mme. Breshkovsky since that day. 
She has passed as completely out of my life as if she had 
died when I bade her good-bye ; but I cannot recall her 
last words to me without feeling conscious that all my 
standards of courage and heroic self-sacrifice have been 
raised for all time and raised by the hand of a woman." 
The whirligig of time brings strange changes ; and 
so it happens that while Mr. Kennan is forbidden again 
to penetrate into the prison-house of the Tsars, Mme. 
Breshkovsky, as I write, twenty years after he left her 
in the heart of Asia, is carrying od, in the United States, 
a crusade by voice and pen on behalf of the cause to 
which she has given her life. After seven years of the 
isolation just described, and more years in Tobolsk and 
other Siberian towns, she was permitted to return to 
European Russia in September, 1896, and at once re- 
joined the revolutionary movement as an active organizer 
for the Revolutionary Socialist Party, moving about 
from town to town and village to village, and more than 
once narrowly escaping recapture. If the progress of 



THE TSAR'S VENGEANCE 213 

the next few years equal that of the last, she may yet 
see the substantial victory of the movement which 
seemed to have been extinguished when the American 
traveller found her in her place of punishment. 

I pass to another and a no less striking figure of the 
struggle. I am indebted to Mme. Elizabeth Kovalsky - 
Mankovsky for an autobiographical sketch which in 
many points supplements the references to her sufferings 
at Kara in the books of Kennan and Stepniak ; and I 
now summarize this statement, which it may be hoped 
will be followed some day by a fuller account of this 
remarkable life. 

As was the case with most of the women leaders of 
the revolutionary movement, Mme. Kovalsky's first 
offence against the rulers of her country lay in the 
domain of popular elementary education. Having 
herself graduated at an early age, she organized, in 1868, 
a series of classes in science, history, and political 
economy, for women, about fifty of whom used to meet 
in her house in Kharkov, and also an elementary 
evening school for working women and a small library. 
Police raids soon made it impossible to continue this 
work ; and, when Mme. Kovalsky and two other women 
sent as a deputation to request the admission of women 
to the Kharkov University received a rude rebuff from 
Count Dmitri Tolstoy, they felt that their patriotic 
efforts were finally thwarted. Mme. Kovalsky went 
abroad, and, at the University of Zurich, came into 
contact with some of the leaders of the early Eadical 
propaganda. She now joined the ranks of the revolt, 
and, on her return, started work, under guise of an 
elementary school teacher, among the factory population 
of Kolpino. She was soon warned to resign her post, 
but was engaged similarly for several years in different 
parts of the country. 



214 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

During this time many of her fellows were arrested 
and cruelly punished ; and the revolutionary character 
of the movement became more and more pronounced. 
The first reading and discussion circles had expanded 
into a network of secret reform clubs having a few 
peasant and workmen members ; from these clubs had 
next risen the great crusade " to the people " of 
1872-73 ; after the first avalanche of the Government's 
vengeance, the remnants of this crusade had developed 
a more fixed and resolute effort to arouse the peasantry 
to revolt, and to supply intellectual ammunition through 
secret printing-presses. The agrarian agitation con- 
tinued through the years 1876-78, and was not by 
any means destitute of success ; but every day the 
demand for some means of self-defence rose more 
urgently as the arrests increased from scores to hun- 
dreds, and from hundreds to thousands, and as stories of 
horrible torture began to be received from the central 
prisons and from the main highway of eastward exile. 
A considerable number of determined revolutionists 
now existed in various parts of the country, bound 
together by ties of common sentiment and peril, converts 
to the appeal to force, at first reluctant, but now un- 
flinching, rash but resourceful, unmerciful to themselves, 
and in the end exhibiting a very frenzy of desperate 
energy. 

Mme. Kovalsky was one of these. In 1880, along 
with a comrade named Ugedrin, she journeyed into 
Ukraina, organized the " Southern Workmen's Associa- 
tion," and was arrested in Kiev, along with I. Shchedrin 
(already referred to), others of the circle being captured 
a little later. In the following year, the prisoners — • 
Elizabeth Kovalsky, I. Shchedrin, Preobrasensky^ Paul 
Ivanov, Sophia Bogomoletz (the daughter of a rich 
landowner in Poltava, and wife of a physician, who was 



THE TSAR'S VENGEANCE 215 

also afterwards exiled), Ivan Kashintsev, Kinsnetsov 
(who was to distinguish himself in the later years of 
his exile in Siberia as an archaeologist !), and three 
others — were put through the form of trial by court- 
martial. The first three were sentenced to death 
(though Mme. Kovalsky was not accused of any 
terrorist act, the charge being simply that she had 
belonged to and helped to form revolutionary circles), 
Ivanov to twenty years', and Mme. Bogomoletz to ten 
years' penal servitude, and the rest to deportation. On 
the petition of the Governor- General, the capital sentence 
was modified to penal servitude for life. 

This was the hey-day of Siberian exile. There was 
no sign yet of the officers of the Tsar being wearied of 
a penal system founded in three centuries of select 
barbarity — quite the reverse. Every year eighteen 
thousand fresh exiles were being dumped into prisons 
scarcely capable of holding decently one-half of their 
allotted number, in whose foul humerus typhus, scurvy, 
typhoid, syphilis, and other malignant diseases found 
a natural home, and all manner of vileness prevailed. 
Every year seven thousand men and women, many of 
them " politicals " of gentle birth and noble character, 
were being consigned by " administrative process " — 
without any trial whatever — to forced colonization, to 
the Tsar's mines at Kara or Nerchinsk, to far Sakhalin, 
or to some desolate Yakut hamlet within the frozen 
zone. The misery and degradation of the journey by 
etape, the two-thousand mile march to the tune of 
jingling chains, the shouts of the Cossack guards, and 
" begging song " of the common convicts, the whirling 
snow, bringing the mercury far below zero, the occasional 
break for liberty, and the " dog's death for the dog," 
all the diabolical refinements and variety of torture, 
from the petty tyranny of police surveillance to the 



216 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

swifter argument of the plet and the dark doom of secret 
punishment cells — such was the daily process by which 
terrorists were being manufactured out of the flower 
of Russian manhood and womanhood ; and as yet no 
other voice of protest was heard, nor did their voice yet 
reach the outer world. It was in this chaos of hopeless 
stupidity, incompetence, caprice, corruption, and all- 
embracing barbarity, that Madame Kovalsky was to 
spend the next twenty years of her life. 

At Krasnoyarsk the Kiev politicals had a foretaste 
of what was to come from a gaoler, who insulted Mme. 
Bogomoletz, struck some of the prisoners, and made 
himself otherwise unpleasant. A successful protest was 
made in the form of a " hunger strike " — refusal of food 
— which lasted for six days. In the next stage of the 
journey the women suffered severely from frost and 
physical weakness. After a month in the prison of 
Irkutsk, in January, 1882, Mmes. Kovalsky and Bogo- 
moletz managed to escape and to hide for a fort- 
night. They were then recaptured, and locked up in 
a cold, dark, and unventilated punishment cell. Here 
they were visited by Col. Soloviev, an adjutant of the 
governor, who ordered Mme. Bogomoletz to be straight- 
jacketed and Mme. Kovalsky to be fettered. Hearing 
of this, the prisoner Shchedrin struck Col. Soloviev, 
who had him tied to a pillar with ropes, struck him with 
the flat of his sword, and, when he had recovered his 
senses, had him put in the "fox," an arrangement of 
hand and leg fetters joined by an iron bar so short 
that the limbs cannot be straightened, and the breathing 
and the circulation of the blood are so impeded that 
I am told the strongest prisoners cannot stand more 
than two days of this punishment, Shchedrin was then 
tried for this new offence, again sentenced to death, but 
again reprieved, on the petition of Governor Pedashenko, 



THE TSAR'S VENGEANCE 217 

the supposedly more merciful penalty being that he 
should be chained to a wheelbarrow for the full term 
of penal servitude. Six months later, as I have already 
narrated, he was sent back — still lashed to his wheel- 
barrow — to Schlusselburg, where he became insane, and 
in the fifth year was transferred to an asylum, where 
he died. I am informed that money sent to the asylum 
for his benefit was returned to the donor. 

Meanwhile, Mme. Kovalsky was conveyed from 
Irkutsk to Kara, then the chief Siberian centre for 
political offenders. Soon afterwards (April, 1882) Mysh- 
kin and seven others escaped from the men's prison, 
only to be recaptured and brought back. Partly be- 
cause the prison had just been visited by Mr. Galkin 
Vraskoy, the head of the Eussian prison administration, 
who was still in the neighbourhood, the staff proceeded 
to vindicate themselves by wholesale measures of re- 
pression. Many of the male prisoners were beaten and 
placed among the common criminals. In the women's 
prison, too, though it was at some distance, a sterner 
regime was introduced, every little liberty and comfort 
being withdrawn. " We were deprived," Mme. Koval- 
sky writes, " of our own underwear and some clothes 
we had, and given instead prison garments, consisting 
of a rough linen shirt, which did not reach the knees, 
and a skirt of the same material, which was very short 
and small. The doors of our cells all opened upon the 
camera (large room), where a guard of Cossacks was 
placed, and each had an uncovered window, through 
which the soldiers continually examined us, audibly 
criticising our dress and appearance. A dirty wooden 
bucket stood in each cell, poisoning the air which would 
have been bad enough without that. We asked that 
the Cossacks should be removed, and prison cloaks 
given us to cover our naked limbs, but we received only 



218 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

an insulting denial. We therefore declared a * hunger 
strike,' and Bogomoletz, in despair, tried to set fire to 
the prison. After a few days of starvation we were 
given some of our clothes, and were transferred to 
another prison a few miles away. One woman, Mme. 
Rogachev, committed suicide, and another, Mme. 
Loschern,* attempted to do so." 

At this time Mme. Maria Kutitonsky,t having served 
her time in prison, was freed, to be sent to her place of 
exile. On leaving, she told her friends she should 
avenge them by an attack on General Ilyashevich, the 
Governor-General of the Trans-Baikal, who had been 
directly responsible in particular for the beating of the 
male prisoners. Knowing that this would cost her own 
life, but hoping that the attention of the outer world 
would be called to his cruelties, she procured a revolver 
and an interview, and shot the official, who, however, 
recovered. She was thrown into a tiny cell in the 
prison at Tchita, where for three months she lay, with- 
out bed-clothing, on the bare floor. But for surreptitious 
aid from common criminals in the prison she would 

* " Sophia Loschern von Herzfeld was the daughter of a general, and her 
relations belonged to the Court circles in Petersburg. She joined the propa- 
gandist movement in the early sixties, and lived among the peasants ; was 
arrested, endured four years' imprisonment while still under examination, 
and was at last banished to Siberia in the ' case of the 193.' The efforts of a 
relative, a lady in the Tsaritsa's household, procured her pardon, and in 1878 
she was released from prison ; but a year later she was arrested in Kiev, 
and resisted capture ' with weapons in hand. ' She and Ossinsky were con- 
demned, but in her case, 'by favour,' the sentence was commuted to penal 
servitude for life, and she was deported to Kara in 1879. She was modest 
and even shy in manner, giving the impression of an extremely reserved 
character." — Deutsch, pp. 266, 267. 

f As a student in Odessa she joined the movement when quite young. 
In 1879 she was arretted as a comrade of Lisogoub, condemned to four 
years' penal servitude, and sent to Kara. Leo Deutsch speaks of her as 
"beautiful and distinguished-looking, with fair hair and gentle winning 
manners," and Kennan describes her as " a woman of extraordinary energy, 
courage, self-control and firmness of purpose." 



THE TSAR'S VENGEANCE 219 

have died. She was then sentenced to death, but the 
sentence was commuted to penal servitude for life. 
She afterwards developed lung disease and died in 
1887. 

For several years the struggle of these unhappy but 
indomitable women to secure tolerable treatment con- 
tinued. One of the most remarkable of them and 
indeed of the whole movement, Mme. Maria Kovalevsky, 
became seriously ill in 1881, and her reason beginning 
to give way, she was allowed for a time to join her 
husband in Minusinsk. During this interval it was 
determined to remove Mmes. Bogomoletz, Eossikova, 
and Kovalsky, as troublesome and insubordinate persons, 
to Irkutsk. By one of the sheer blunders not infrequent 
in the Eussian prison system, instead of the last named, 
Mme. Kovalevsky was sent. The error was discovered 
ten days later, but though Mme. Kovalsky was then 
removed, the scapegoat was not brought back. In the 
autumn of 1887 Mme. Kovalsky again broke out of the 
Irkutsk prison, but was caught within two months and 
confined in a small dark and foul " punishment cell." 
She was also sentenced to twenty strokes of the plet, 
but this was not carried out. Shortly afterwards the 
four women just named again refused to take food 
until more humane conditions were promised them, and 
Mme. Kovalsky attempted to hang herself, but without 
success. This protest proved effective, and all four were 
presently taken back to Kara. 

Within a year a new and, in the result, a much 
graver crisis arose. On August 5, 1888, Baron Korv, 
Governor-General of the Amur, visited the Kara prisons. 
Elizabeth Kovalsky decided not to obey the prison 
rule of standing up during the inspection, and, when 
threatened with force, declared that she refused to 
stand up before the representatives of so iniquitous 



220 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

a Government. The sequel is here related in her own 
words : — 

" The ordinary life of the prison continued. Two 
days passed. Every moment I expected to hear that I 
was to be punished, but my comrades assured me that 
the incident was ended. For hours Maria Kovalevsky 
and I walked along our prison corridor talking over the 
possible results of my behaviour. Although all the 
political women prisoners at that time in the prison 
(Maria Kovalevsky, Nadeshda Smirnitzky, and Maria 
Kaluzhny) perfectly agreed with me as to our tactics 
towards Government representatives, and I was positively 
sure that none of them would ever blame me, neverthe- 
less the fear for their fate deprived me of any rest. 
Going away for the night to my cell, I heartily kissed 
my nearest and best friend, Kovalevsky, feeling that this 
might be our last kiss, that the next day might part us 
for ever. Being ill and excited, I slept little, and at 
last a sudden noise in the corridor woke me. Opening 
my eyes, I was terrified to see in the darkness some 
figures of men coming on tiptoes to my bed. Was it 
reality, or a fearful dream ? In answer to my cries, I 
heard the words, * Cover her mouth ! ' It was no dream, 
indeed. I felt several rough hands on my shoulders, 
and a piece of rag in my mouth, that prevented me 
from crying out. 

" Some of the men, dressed in a military uniform, 
quickly seized me, undressed as I was, covered my 
body with a blanket, and carried me through the prison 
corridor into the yard. I was choking with rage. The 
prison gates were open ; near them stood a waggon, 
surrounded by prison officers. I recognized the comman- 
dant of the political prisons, Masukov, among them. 
6 Throw her in the waggon ! ' commanded the same 
voice that had ordered my mouth to be closed. 





VERA ZASSULITCH. 



SOPHIE PEROVSKY 





ELIZABETH KOVALSKY. 



MARIA KOVALEVSKY 





P. IVAXOVA. 



HOPE S1GIDA. 



THE TSAR'S VENGEANCE 221 

" The Cossacks threw me on to the bottom of the 
rough wooden waggon, and themselves sat at both sides, 
holding me fast by hands and legs, and the waggon 
started. The gloomy starless sky seemed to me to be 
the heavy cover of a coffin, and the earth a white shroud 
over which swept the cold autumn wind. Further off, 
in the direction where our waggon was going, could be 
seen the river Shilka. The slow-moving waggon was 
surrounded by a body of gendarmes, headed by the 
commandant Masukov. The nearest one to the waggon 
was the strange officer whose cruel voice I had before 
heard. He now joked about my condition, and for long 
afterward his cynical laughter bitterly rang in my ears. 

" Wild thoughts, one worse than the other, flashed 
through my head ; at times I fainted from the lack of 
air. What were they going to do with me? The 
waggon moved slowly on. We were now near the 
water ; the black heavy waves seemed to ask a victim. 
Dear faces and scenes came before my eyes — my mother, 
who remained alone far away in Russia ; my dear friend 
buried in the fortress of Schlusselburg ; a scene from my 
childhood. 

" To die without revenge — this is worse than death, 
this is impossible, I thought. 

" The waggon suddenly turned to the right. A 
little house stood near the river-side. Here the waggon 
stopped. The Cossacks carried me in, and put me on 
the cold dirty floor, still holding fast my hands and 
legs. 

" ' Take off her shirt and put on a prison one ! ' 
shouted the smotritel (gendarme officer). In a moment 
I was on my feet, but I had scarcely struck the man 
when the whole gang of warders caught my arms and 
held me so fast that I fainted. 

" When I opened my eyes it was early morning. I 



222 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

lay in the bottom of a boat, and around me sat eight 
soldiers, holding in their hands a prison overcoat to 
prevent me from jumping into the water. I could not 
move. My head was splitting, and I felt pains all over 
my body. ' She has wakened ! Look ! ' I heard one 
soldier tell his comrades.* 

" Thus they brought me to Verkhni Udinsk prison." 
In this new central convict establishment, situated 
about six hundred miles from Kara, Madame Kovalsky 
spent the following year. Once she tried to escape, 
but failed, and she was then transferred to Gorni 
Zerentui, one of the prisons of the desolate district of 
the Nerchinsk mines. Her further experiences I cannot 
now trace further than to say that the " life " term of 
twenty years being concluded, she was allowed to join 
her husband, Mekhislav Mankovsky, a political who 
had been arrested in Warsaw, and served a long term 
of penal servitude, and that she is now living in Swit- 
zerland, broken in health indeed, but no less confident 
than of old in the justice and the ultimate success of 
the cause to which she had given every power of her 
life. 

But the story does not end here. The circumstances 
of her removal from Kara soon became known to the 
friends she left behind, and provoked a tragic protest, 
the news of which presently echoed round the world, 
and led in the end to the abolition of the corporal 
punishment of women, and the closing of the Kara 
political prison, whose history had been so full of 
scandal. In the first place, the four women " politicals " 

* Mr. Kennan says, in his brief account of this affair, of which he received 
four separate accounts from political exiles, and one from a Russian gentleman 
living near the Kara mines who was not an exile : " The distance from Ust 
Kara to Stretinsk is about seventy miles up-stream, and Madame Kovalsky 
must have spent at least three days in the small row-boat with the soldiers 
who had already stripped her naked and insulted her." 



THE TSAR'S VENGEANCE 223 

— Kovalevsky, Smirnitsky, Sigida,* and Kaluzhny — re- 
fused to take food till an assurance was given that the 
officer responsible for the outrage would be removed. 
These women were Buntari, irreconcilables : arrested in 
the attempt to stir the peasantry to insurrection, they 
had deliberately concluded, in view of the brutality with 
which the Government had suppressed the first innocent 
propaganda, that the best use they could make of what 
life remained to them was to protest as often and as 
effectively as possible against any illegality or in- 
humanity to which they and their fellow-prisoners were 
subjected, in the hope that at last the outer world 
would hear their cry and some little reform be secured 
for fear of a widespread scandal. Mr. Deutsch has 
recorded f that the male political prisoners were at this 
time much disheartened by several minor cases of 
apostasy in the ranks of the revolutionists produced by 
a set policy of the authorities to encourage repentance. 
These women were not of that kind of stuff. Some of 
the male prisoners were brought to try to persuade 
them to give in, but for eight days they maintained 
their " hunger strike." Shortly afterwards Masukov's 
superior promised his removal, but this was not carried 
out. Both women and men politicals now declared a 
second " hunger strike," which was only terminated by 

* Hope Sigida was the daughter of a well-known merchant in Taganrog, 
and after graduating in the local gymnase with honours and gold medal, 
married an officer of the Taganrog Circuit Court. Both joined the revo- 
lutionary movement, and were arrested in connection with the seizure of a 
secret printing-office in January, 1886. The husband was condemned to 
death, but the sentence was commuted to penal servitude for life, and he died 
on the way to Sakhalin. Madame Sigida is described as " a woman of great 
independence and self-reliance, intelligent and cultivated in the highest degree, 
and a fanatical idealist. In personal appearance she was very attractive, 
being a rather slender brunette of medium height, with an oval face full of 
expression and energy, and remarkably beautiful eyes." She was only twenty- 
five years old at the time of her death. 

t " Sixteen Years in Siberia," p. 276. 



224 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

Masukov promising to leave Kara of his own accord. 
He did not do so. 

One day Madame Sigida asked for an interview with 
Masukov, and struck him in the face, hoping thus to 
bring the matter to an issue, and this was followed by a 
third " hunger strike " the most desperate of all, lasting 
sixteen days. These events being reported, the Governor, 
General Korv, directed that severe disciplinary measures 
should be taken against all the Kara " politicals," and 
that Madame Sigida should receive one hundred blows 
with the " rods "in presence of the surgeon, but without 
previous medical examination. The surgeon refused to 
be present ; but on November 6, 1889, Bobrovsky, the 
officer who had removed Madame Kovalsky to Nerchinsk, 
came to Kara and immediately carried out the flogging. 
The unfortunate woman was carried back unconscious 
into the prison, where she died two days later, whether 
from her injuries or by poison is not known. On the 
night of the 10th, Maria Kovalevsky, Maria Kaluzhny, 
and Nadeshda Smirnitsky were brought from their cells 
to the prison hospital, having procured and taken poison, 
and there they died, one after another. Five days later 
twenty male prisoners were found to have poisoned 
themselves, but of these all recovered, save Ivan 
Kaluzhny, brother of the victim just named, and 
Sergius Bobokhov, who died on the 16th. 

The remains of these six heroes lie under rough 
wooden crosses in the graveyard at Kara, but their 
" souls go marching on." 



CHAPTER XVI 

FELIX VOLKHOVSKY 

Of near friends it is hard to write, and happily in 
this case no such effort is necessary. For, while 
Felix Volkhovsky — at once the poet and the statesman 
of the revolutionary propaganda, as Stepniak was its 
soldier, and Perovsky and Figner were its avenging 
angels — must figure prominently in any picture of the 
revolutionary movement, he has stood for ten years 
so noticeably before the English-speaking world, his 
self-imposed mission of education has been so success- 
ful, that no more than a reminder of this fine and 
powerful personality is here called for. He arrived 
among us, like Kropotkin and other earlier refugees, 
poor, and unknown ; and I well remember my sensa- 
tions on finding him directly afterwards in an obscure 
lodging in Islington. Within a year or two his articles 
in Free Russia were already looked for by those in- 
terested in foreign affairs, and he had published a little 
volume of fairy tales marked by a strange charm that 
one only understood when one came to understand the 
man. Then, as time passed, he was gradually recog- 
nized in the press and on the platform as the veteran 
spokesman of a cause which, notwithstanding its appeal 
to the sympathies of all free and humane people, seemed 
to gain nothing by the unceasing sacrifices it exacted. 
Though weakened by long years of imprisonment and 

22s Q 



226 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

exile, the fiery spirit in this frai] body has never flagged. 
When others were weary and depressed, he stood staunch, 
" never doubting clouds would break." Now that the 
day of justification has dawned, let us not forget to 
honour those who through the night prepared the way 
for victory. In any western country, Volkhovsky would 
take a prominent place in political and literary life, as 
a cultured, catholic, and sagacious Radical. Russia will 
remember him as a second Herzen, an unpaid ambas- 
sador who, at a difficult juncture, not unworthily 
represented to the outer world the great soul of his 
people. 

Born in South Russia in 1846, Felix Volkhovsky 
was only twenty-two years old when, as a student in 
the University of Moscow, he first learned what it 
meant to be ruled by an irresponsible police. He had 
been engaged in collecting subscriptions to buy cheap 
editions of well-known works of history and political 
economy, for distribution among workmen and peasants, 
and some of his letters had been opened. This led to 
a search of the rooms where he lived with his mother. 
Nothing of any consequence was found; yet he was 
removed to the office of the secret police, and thence to 
the prison of the "Third Section," in St. Petersburg, 
where he was confined for seven months, without any 
charge being preferred or any form of trial gone 
through. There were, however, frequent " investiga- 
tions," of which he writes : " Every fortnight or so, and 
sometimes every week, during these seven months, I was 
brought before a committee of generals entrusted with 
the conduct of my case. The inquiry was conducted in 
their presence by the secretary, and after he had finished, 
I was asked to write down my answers. The general 
character of the committee's behaviour to me was such 
as to impress me with the idea that I was a desperate 



FELIX VOLKHOVSKY 227 

culprit, that they knew all about my doings, and that 
my only chance of obtaining a mitigated punishment lay 
in frank confession. If I asked, by way of reply, with 
what I was charged, the secretary told me that I knew 
as well as he did, and then proceeded with his inquiries. 

Did I know L ? When had I first met him, and 

when did I last see him ? With whom did he consort ? 
Who were my friends ? And so on. In a few days 
I had again to face a similar ordeal, with this difference, 
that now my answers to the previous inquiries had been 
examined and sifted and stood in witness against me, 
and I well knew that any slightest admissions I might 
have made would be used against me. And so each 
examination was more terrifying than the previous one. 
Were I to confess that I knew any one by name, im- 
mediately that person became suspected, and so from 
the beginning I had to be on my guard and say as 
little as possible. In this my first imprisonment, these 
examinations were not such torture as they afterwards 
became. I knew but few people, and there was really 
nothing whatever to conceal. But even then, in those 
tedious months of 1868, I soon ca'me to dread the 
summons to a new examination as a positive torture. 
For many days after such an inquiry I used to spend 
my time thinking over the questions, and striving to 
recall the exact words of my answers, fearing all the 
while that some chance word might be used to the 
undoing of some innocent person. The man who in- 
vented such a species of inquiry should take high rank 
as a torturer. The rack of the Inquisition was more 
brutal, but certainly not so subtly cruel." 

After transference for a month to the fortress of 
St. Peter and St. Paul, Volkhovsky was liberated, a 
stage nearer, we may be sure, to being a good revolu- 
tionist. It was, however, not only without specific 



228 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

charge, but without any cause whatever, that he was 
again arrested in Moscow, where he had obtained a 
librarianship, in the following year. After three months 
in a filthy cell, with bad food, he was again transferred 
to the St. Petersburg fortress. Here he spent one year, 
and a second year in another of the city prisons, the 
confinement and insufficient food seriously affecting his 
health. At last, in 1872, after two years and three 
months of preliminary detention, he was indicted, along 
with eighty-two of Netchayev's alleged co-conspirators, 
but found not guilty, and released. He now married, 
and moved to the Caucasus, and thence to Odessa, 
where he obtained a post as a chief clerk to the city 
council. But he was by this time a convinced Radical, 
and threw himself into the rising propagandist move- 
ment with such strength as he had. "During the 
trial," he says, " I was utterly exhausted, and now, on 
entering life again, I had to learn what an innocent man 
in Russia may have to suffer. I had been so steeped 
in silence and solitude that the noises of life almost 
drove me mad. I cannot describe the state of un- 
controllable excitement into which the ordinary events 
of life threw me. For weeks I fought in vain for self- 
control. My nervous system was so weakened that it 
was long before my health improved." 

In the same year he was arrested for the third time 
and lodged in the Pugachov tower of the Moscow 
central prison. Here his cell was lit by one small 
window, about two feet square, triply protected, first 
by large wooden bars, then thick iron bars and crossbars, 
and outside a thick wire screen. " It can be imagined 
that, under these conditions, very little light struggled 
into my cell. Even in summer I could not read for 
more than three hours a day ; and even with the aid of 
the bad petroleum lamp with which I was provided, I 



FELIX VOLKHOVSKY 229 

could only employ my intellect for some six hours out 
of the twenty-four. For more than eighteen hours each 
day, then, I was in total darkness." After some months 
he was transferred to the St. Petersburg fortress, where 
he was confined for a whole year in " such solitude as 
I had never even imagined." The food was bad ; the 
one tiny window of the cell was overshadowed by the 
wall of the bastion ; the allowance of exercise was very 
insufficient ; but the chief torment was the dead quiet- 
ness. At length Volkhovsky's health broke down 
completely. "I gradually became deaf; thus com- 
munication by knocking was not possible for me. Some- 
times in the past the gaoler, out of pity, had spoken 
with me, of course in a low tone of voice, but this 
solace too was denied to me by my increasing deafness. 
I then drained to the dregs the bitterness of solitary 
confinement. Between me and life my gaolers had at 
last managed to draw an impenetrable shroud, and there 
in my cell I lay for hours together, wondering when the 
end would come. I had almost unlearned the power of 
speech. I remember that when, about this time, my 
mother once visited me I could not say to her what I 
wanted to say. I had forgotten the most ordinary 
words in my Russian vocabulary, nor could I make the 
effort that might have enabled me at length to remember 
them." Just in time to save his reason he was trans- 
ferred to the House of Preliminary Detention, and there 
he was kept till the day of his trial, October 18, 1877. 
It was during this period that Bogolubov, one of the 
imprisoned " politicals," was flogged by order of General 
Trepov, prefect of St. Petersburg, and that Vera Zassu- 
litch came up from her remote country home and 
fired the shot that was regarded, not only by the jury 
but by Russian society generally, as a laudable act of 
vindication. 



2 3 o RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

I have explained the significance of the " Trial of 
the 193" as a supreme instance of the wickedness and 
folly of " administrative " punishment, and as marking 
the point of transition from the period of propaganda 
to that of open and violent resistance. The greater 
number of those arrested had already been released. 
Of those at length brought to trial, Leo Tikhomirov, 
one of them, has written : " When I had occasion to see 
this crowd of prisoners together I was struck with 
horror. They were all thin and emaciated, with 
jaundiced cheeks, sharp features, and inflamed eyes. 
In truth, we were very much like a gang of mad- 
men. Every one was enervated, ill, and continually 
irritable. Work and books were alike refused ; we 
only awaited the judgment. The mere thought of 
these continual delays, which had kept us in prison for 
three or four years, drove us well-nigh to madness." 
I have already pointed out, in fact, that, of those actually 
charged, five died during the first days of the trial. Of 
Volkhovsky, Tikhomirov says : " He seemed crushed by 
his imprisonment. His hair was commencing to turn 
grey, and he had become deaf. He was almost always 
ill. Only a few weeks before he had received the 
news of the death of his wife, whom he loved passion- 
ately. In this short time he seemed to have become 
an old man, although he was only a little over thirty 
years of age. Older relatively than the others, he was, 
besides, a very capable man, and more experienced than 
the other members of the group." 

These sufferings and their injustice must be remem- 
bered — Volkhovsky, for instance, had been thrice 
arrested and had spent seven years in solitary confine- 
ment, and this was the first time he had been tried — 
and it must be remembered also, in reading of the 
following episode, that the Court consisted of five 



FELIX VOLKHOVSKY 231 

senators nominated by the Tsar, that everything was 
done to prevent any appeal to public sympathy, and 
that Kussia was not yet reconciled to the revocation of 
the judicial reforms of ten years earlier. " They put to 
us some purely formal questions. Felix Volkhovsky 
rose and very politely begged the Court to be so good 
as to permit him to approach the Bench, as he was ill 
and desired to give his explanations, but being deaf in 
one ear he could not hear the judges at the distance at 
which he was placed. The President allowed this. 
Then Felix began to explain. At the outset he showed 
the Court the arbitrary treatment of which he had been 
the victim ; he showed how the injustice of the ex- 
amining magistrates had broken his life. He had 
consoled himself up to that hour by the thought that 
that Court would be able to punish injustice, and 
that public opinion, informed of the matter, would 
chastise his oppressors. He had befooled himself. 
That Court from the first stage had acted with the 
same arbitrariness. 

"Here the President interrupted him. But Volk- 
hovsky was evidently in good form. He cited many 
of the paragraphs of the Penal Code, and proved to the 
Court that it was violating the law. He concluded by 
the declaration that he had no longer any confidence in 
the Court, and that he protested and refused to submit 
to it. The speech was brief but well conceived, and so 
much the more effective in that it couched the bitterest 
reproaches in the terms of a politeness exaggerated even 
to the point of irony. 

" The President appeared confounded, especially when 
the accused rose, one after the other, to declare that they 
shared the opinion expressed by Volkhovsky. When 
the examination was opened each rose and declared that 
he had no confidence in the Court, that he would refuse 



232 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

to reply to it, and that he would refuse even to remain 
in the place. The President did not wish to dismiss 
us, but the accused began to talk at the top of their 
voices. They laughed, they protested, and, in fact, 
prevented the Court from continuing its sitting. Then 
the angry President ordered us back to prison, taking 
note of the names of all those who would not submit. 
That was a threat. ... So began the great protest 
which was prolonged for three months, for each group 
had to protest separately. . . . All St. Petersburg 
spoke of the trial ; the lawyers demonstrated to the 
judges and the public all its injustices. We were 
avenged." 

In the end Volkhovsky was found guilty of being 
" a member of a secret society formed to overthrow the 
existing form of government in some more or less distant 
future." The words I have italicized saved him from 
the death sentence. He was condemned to exile in 
Siberia for life with the loss of certain civil rights. 
This last penalty meant that he could not maintain 
himself by teaching or writing, but must earn his bread 
as a labourer ; happily the police cannot always secure 
their full pound of flesh. 

In 1878 the new rule of treating " politicals" like 
common criminals was not yet established. When the 
railway journey to Nijni Novgorod and the river journey 
to Perm were covered, therefore, Volkhovsky and his 
fellows enjoyed the tempered mercy of a rough cart, 
and he, as of noble birth, was not fettered. After 
several weeks, he reached his place of exile, Tukalinsk, 
in the province of Tobolsk, a large village on the 
Siberian post-road, consisting of four or five brick 
buildings and a number of log houses and huts. In 
this desolate place he remained for four years. He was 
then allowed to remove to the city of Tomsk, where he 



FELIX VOLKHOVSKY 233 

managed to make a secret connection with one of the 
local newspapers. Here Mr. Kennan met Volkhovsky, 
of whom he says — 

" He was about thirty-eight years of age at the time 
I made his acquaintance, and was a man of cultivated 
mind, and high aspirations. He knew English well, 
was familiar with American history and literature, and 
had, I believe, translated into Eussian many of the 
poems of Longfellow. He was one of the most winning 
and lovable men that it has ever been my good fortune to 
know; but his life had been a terrible tragedy. His 
health had been shattered by long imprisonment in the 
fortress of Petropavlovsk, his hair was prematurely 
grey, and when his face was in repose there seemed to 
be an expression of profound melancholy in his dark 
brown eyes." 

Other touching notes will be found in course of Mr. 
Kennan's narrative. In 1888 Volkhovsky was allowed 
to remove to Irkutsk, but was expelled without explana- 
tion ; removed to Troitskosavsk, was again expelled, 
and then determined to attempt to escape. Having got 
together a little money, he boldly took the post-road 
to Tchita, in the disguise of a retired army officer, 
boarded a river steamer at Stretinsk, and after several 
times narrowly escaping arrest, got across the Ussuri 
prairies on horseback, was taken on board a British 
steamer at Vladivostok, and reached London, via Van- 
couver and Washington, in June, 1890, a free man at 
last. 

During these eleven years of his exile great changes 
had been wrought in the situation in European Kussia. 
The revolutionary propaganda, mercilessly repressed, 
had assumed more and more violent forms with each 
increase of governmental severity. Spies had been 
killed as long ago as 1876, but the attack on Trepov, on 



234 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

January 24, 1878, was the first attempt on the life of a 
high official, and its reception helped to precipitate the 
acute phase of the struggle. The revelations conse- 
quent upon the " Trial of the 193," and the execution 
of Kovalsky in Odessa, were answered by the murder of 
General Mezentsev, chief of the " Third Section," on the 
Nevsky Prospect in broad daylight on August 14, 1878. 
Wholesale arrests followed, and all political cases were 
referred to military tribunals. In February, 1879, 
Prince Kropotkin, Governor of Kharkov, where the 
prison regime had reached the last point of barbarity, 
was shot by Goldenberg ; and on April 2, Soloviev fired 
five shots at the Tsar without effect. In the following 
four months thirteen men were hung in St. Petersburg, 
Kiev, and Odessa — a new and most horrible experience 
in Russian life — the prisons were filled by wholesale 
raids, and practically the whole country was placed 
under martial law. In reply the revolutionists resolved 
upon the assassination of the Tsar. At the congresses 
of Lipetsk and Voronezh in the summer of 1879, when 
the old " Land and Liberty " party split up into the 
" Tcherny Perediel," and the " Narodnya Volya," and 
the " Executive Committee " was organized, there were 
no less than forty-seven volunteers for this task, in- 
cluding such women as Sophia Perovsky, Vera Figner, 
and Jessy Helfmann. For nearly seventeen months 
these attempts continued — the Moscow, Odessa, and 
Alexandrovsk mines ; the Winter Palace Explosion ; 
and the final act of March 1, 1881, for which Grinevsky 
— who was killed by his own bomb — Jeliabov, Perovsky, 
Kibalchich, Michailov and Ryssakov paid with their 
lives. 

Still the desperate duel continued. In March, 1882, 
the notorious General Strelnikov was killed at Odessa ; 
and in December, 1883, the yet more famous spy, Colonel 



FELIX VOLKHOVSKY 235 

Sudyekin, was assassinated in St. Petersburg. During 
these years the revolutionists directed their efforts, not 
without some success, toward provoking a military 
revolt. Fifteen soldiers of the St. Petersburg fortress 
were tried in 1882, and in September, 1884, a number 
of officers were condemned for seditious activity, in- 
cluding some of those mentioned in our chapter on 
Schlusselburg. 

Then, gradually, robbed of hundreds of its most 
daring spirits, the movement subsided. During his 
reign, Alexander II. had executed thirty " politicals," 
thrown hundreds into hard-labour prisons, and exiled 
thousands. In his first four years, Alexander III. 
executed one woman and fourteen men. 

According to the Kussian Revolutionary Almanack 
of 1883, the Executive Committee had in its ranks on 
the eve of March 1, 1881, nearly five hundred men. 
From March to August, 1881, over four thousand arrests 
were made on political charges or suspicion. The 
common people had not risen ; the intellectuals had 
spent themselves. M. Plehve and M. Pobyedonostsev 
thought that this was the end. So it was — for the 
moment ; but they lived to learn that among a great 
people the passion for liberty can never be extinguished. 



CHAPTER XVII 



STEPNIAK AND TERRORISM 



The printed biographies of Stepniak were long a matter 
of amusement to his friends. One standard book of 
reference published, under the heading of " Stepniak, 
Sergius Michael DragomanofF," a good summary of the 
career of Professor Dragomanov, a friend of Stepniak, 
and, like him, a political refugee, who died at Sofia in 
1894 ! But this was quite a pleasant error as compared 
with some others, dictated by undisguised hostility. I 
mention it only as an odd testimony to Stepniak's 
modesty and reserve. He had an innate antipathy to 
the commoner kinds of publicity and self-advertisement. 
Among friends, and in his own little salon in West 
London, he was frankness itself ; but when the destiny 
of distracted Eussia was in discussion, the man was 
lost in the cause. The general facts of his career 
were known to his friends ; for the rest, there is in his 
own published work the best memorial of a full and 
strenuous life. 

Sergey Mikhailovitch Kravchinsky — for that was his 
little-known natal name — was born on July 14, 1852. 
His parents were people of substance, who united White 
Russian with Ukrainian blood, the father being a 
physician. His early life was spent uneventfully at his 
country home in South Russia, whence he was started 
upon the usual course terminating in the Military 

236 



STEPNIAK AND TERRORISM 237 

Gymnasium. He received his commission as an artillery 
officer in 1869. It was in the Army that he began his 
propagandist efforts on behalf of this chained democracy ; 
and it was to the Army that he long looked with especial 
hope for aid. He left the service in 1871, joined the 
chief of the Tchaykovsky circles, and was one of the first 
of the effective missionaries to the peasantry, — that 
devoted band of cultured and well-born men and women, 
who, sacrificing every worldly prospect, went to live in 
the villages to help the mujik rise to his opportunities, 
and to spread the seeds of democratic thought. In 
1873 he spent six months among the rationalist sect 
of the Molokani, studying their tenets and life. In the 
following year, along with another retired officer — 
Demetrius Rogachov, a schoolmate in the Artillery 
School at St. Petersburg and a man of equally strong 
physique — Stepniak went on tramp in the province of 
Tver disguised as a sawyer ; and the journey of these 
two men became in after years the subject of a legend 
of how two giants went to preach liberty among the 
peasants. Being suspected by a landlord, they were 
denounced, arrested, and sent to the nearest prison 
under guard, but managed on the way to win over one 
of their custodians, who aided them to escape. Reaching 
Moscow, Stepniak was harboured by the partner of his 
later, as of his earlier, struggles, Felix Volkhovsky, who 
describes him as at this time "a rosy-faced and smiling 
youth, with not a shade of that sallow complexion which 
he acquired later on." 

Stepniak had just begun to write for the masses of 
the people, and his political fable, " The Story of a 
Penny," had a wide vogue. He was now an "illegal 
man," an outlaw moving about with a borrowed pass- 
port, or with none at all. He took an active part in 
the early propaganda among working men in St. 



238 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

Petersburg, lecturing to them on history and political 
economy, and forming a group which left important 
traces on the movement. As the " White Terror " of 
the final years of Alexander II. reached its height, all 
hope of anything like constitutional propaganda was 
crushed out violently, and the awful era which 
culminated in the murder of the Tsar was ushered in. 
Stepniak — affected especially by the news of prison 
tortures and outrages upon old comrades — threw him- 
self into the hideous combat with the fire and capacity 
of a born conspirator. The time has not even yet come 
when the story of his expedition to St. Petersburg, and 
his operations there in 1875 and 1876, can be fully told. 
It has been stated that it was Stepniak who planned 
the escape of Prince Kropotkin from the Nicholas Prison 
Hospital in St. Petersburg. Stepniak gave the credit of 
the arrangements to Kropotkin himself ; but Mr. George 
Kennan told me that it was Dr. Weimar (one of the 
most accomplished physicians of St. Petersburg, and a 
friend of the then Empress ; he afterwards died in exile 
in Siberia) who alone planned the release. The story of 
a similar affair, for the conduct of which Stepniak was 
responsible, one of the few of his undertakings which 
completely failed, and then by no fault of his own, I 
have heard from the lips of the subject of it, Felix 
Volkhovsky. Volkhovsky, at the time imprisoned in 
Moscow, succeeded in establishing communications with 
friends outside the prison, and especially with Stepniak, 
then an outlaw, whom the police would have given much 
to be able to arrest. Stepniak constructed a very 
simple plan of escape. Volkhovsky was to profess to 
be willing to make a confession which would require 
his temporary removal from the prison. Stepniak was 
to wait on the road with a swift sledge, which the 
prisoner was to endeavour to reach from his own. 



STEPNIAK AND TERRORISM 239 

Unfortunately Stepniak was called away to St. Petersburg, 
and his substitute was a less able band. Volkhovsky 
tried, but unsuccessfully, to throw snuff into the eyes of 
the gendarmes who guarded him, and when he had got 
upon the rescuing vehicle, but before it had started, 
was caught by the collar and dragged back to the 
central prison, to suffer harder penalties than ever. 

In a campaign of vengeance — though vengeance in 
the name of outraged humanity — a man of so much 
resource, and yet of such genuine moral worth, could 
not but make himself felt. He became one of the 
leading members of the revolutionary party, was 
entrusted with some of its most desperate ventures, and 
its closest secrets. In the spring of 1878, together with 
Zundelevich, he smuggled into Russia the type and 
machinery needed for the establishment of a secret 
printing-office, and took part in the production, in the 
heart of the capital, and under the very nose of the 
police, of the revolutionary organ, Land and Liberty, 
the first number of which appeared in August of that 
year. 

Stepniak was not allowed to witness the culmina- 
tion of the Terrorist struggle. He had now become so 
urgently " wanted" by the police that a short period of 
quarantine in Geneva was considered advisable ; and, 
at last, after being implicated in one of the most 
dangerous and daring affairs of the revolutionary 
campaign, it became a question of choice between 
capture and emigration. On the pressure of his 
colleagues, and under pretext of a special commission, 
Stepniak left the country ; and, the situation meanwhile 
changing, he devoted himself henceforth to rousing the 
Western world to sympathy with the victims of the 
Tsardom. The English and American Societies of 
Friends of Russian Freedom are tangible evidence of 



2 4 o RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

the success of this enterprise. He was also one of the 
founders of the Russian Free Press Fund in London in 
1891, an organization supported by the contributions of 
Russians holding lawful positions in the Empire, and 
aiming to supply the need of a free press by smuggling 
prohibited literature across the frontier. Stepniak's 
personal contribution to the literature of exposure and 
agitation is large and notable. After his escape from 
Russia in 1880, he wrote " Underground Russia," a 
series of " Revolutionary Profiles and Sketches from 
Life," full of dramatic interest and the charm of 
strangely attractive personalities. This was published 
in England, in translation from the Italian, in 1882. 
There followed, at short intervals after his arrival in 
England in 1884, "The Russian Peasantry," "Russia 
under the Tsars," " The Russian Storm Cloud," a novel 
called " The Career of a Nihilisjb," " Nihilism as it Is," 
a translation of some of his Russian pamphlets with an 
Introduction by Dr. Spence Watson, and "King Log 
and King Stork : A Study of Modern Russia." 

On the afternoon of December 23, 1895, I received 
from his colleague and neighbour, Felix Volkhovsky, 
the inexpressible shock of the first news of Stepniak's 
death. Short-sighted and always prone to absorption, 
he had been caught that morning by a train on a 
notorious level-crossing at Bedford Park, the London 
suburb where he lived, and killed instantly. He left a 
widow, but no children. The demonstrations of sympathy 
and admiration that accompanied the funeral will never 
be forgotten by those who witnessed them. Flowers, 
telegrams, and letters poured in from Russian groups in 
Switzerland, Germany, Paris, Vienna, and New York, 
from Armenian and Polish popular leaders, and from 
Englishmen of all classes, including University men, 
Members of Parliament, and ministers of religion. 



STEPNIAK AND TERRORISM 241 

From the home, where Nicholas Tchaykovsky uttered an 
eloquent exordium to his fellow exiles, the body was 
taken by road to Waterloo, where the sense of personal 
and even national loss was mersred in a manifestation 
of the growing sentiment of democratic internationalism 
more striking perhaps than any scene on English soil 
since the days of Garibaldi. A procession of Russian 
Jews from Whitechapel came behind a band and a black 
and crimson flag, the women bearing wreaths marked to 
the memory of " the foe of oppression " and " the friend 
of freedom." To the vast throng that filled the approach 
and south courtyard of the station short addresses were 
delivered by Mr. Volkhovsky and Prince Kropotkin, 
Dr. Spence Watson for the British Society of Friends 
of Russian Freedom, Herr Bernstein for the German 
Social Democratic Party, Signor Malatesta for the 
Italian Socialists, Mr. Avetis Nazarbek (in French) 
for the Armenian Revolutionary Party, Mr. S. Kahan 
(in Yiddish) for the East London Jews, and a spokes- 
man of the Polish revolutionary parties. Mr. William 
Morris, Mr. John Burns, M.P., Mr. Herbert Burrows, 
and Mr. Felix Moscheles, represented British democratic 
parties, and Madame Vera Zassulitch and Mr. George 
Lazarev were among the Russians present. From Woking 
Station about two hundred friends walked through the 
mud and rain to the crematorium. As I sat in the 
silent chapel awaiting the incineration, I was proud 
that England's soil is still free alike to her own children 
and to the outcasts of less happy lands. England 
herself is in many little-recognized ways the gainer by 
this hospitality. To know a man like Stepniak is in 
itself a liberal education. A mere acquaintance with 
him has given a new turn to a number of English lives, 
widening their social and political horizons, relieving 
with a gloss of romantic interest their more immediate 

R 



242 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

and, too often, squalid domestic troubles. It has 
stimulated the feelings of international responsibility 
and brotherhood. The cause which he represented is 
far advanced in a more promising phase than that in 
which he personally participated ; in the outer world it 
has no lack of friends. But the death of so young and 
vigorous a man, a personality so massive, a spirit at 
once so strong and so gentle, was a grievous loss, and 
not only to his own countrymen. 

In appearance and momentary contact Stepniak 
might give an impression of gruffness and grimness 
which was not really justified, but was due, in the first 
place, to his short-sightedness, and, in some degree, to 
his tendency to fall into " brown studies." The severe 
and almost terrible expression in the face of his most 
popular photograph does not actually bespeak any trait 
which was revealed in contact with his friends, except the 
volcanic force and decision of character that his whole 
career showed, and that never overruled his humane, 
generous, and gentle spirit. Of this gentleness I 
remember many instances. He was most tender to 
animals and to children. When little Max H. (who, 
with his father, had come under the anti-Semitic ban 
in Russia) first took the musical world of London by 
storm, Stepniak was indefatigable in securing him 
support, and afterwards the burly exile varied his 
work in lecturing and in editing Free Russia by giving 
the precocious boy lessons in mathematics, with the 
help of a blackboard he had made himself. He was 
a good deal more proud of his power of using the 
carpenter's tools than his power of constructing a novel 
in an alien tongue. Like all his Russian colleagues, he 
was extremely abstemious ; and, indeed, the simplicity 
of his life in this country gave strength to the impression 
gathered from such accounts as exist of the innocent 



STEPNIAK AND TERRORISM 243 

propagandist movement in Russia during the early 
seventies, in which the lad Kravchinsky received his 
baptism of fire. His sympathies were as catholic as his 
tastes. No democratic movement but could count on 
his ready and energetic assistance, and in giving it he 
showed a wonderful ability to use all the new methods 
which he found customary in the free West. I have 
notes before me of a conversation I had with him in 
1890, when he lived in St. John's Wood, and it covers 
Irish Home Rule, the relations of Bismarck and the 
Kaiser, the depressing spectacle of the prostitution of 
France to the Russian autocracy, a discussion on Russian 
education, and a characteristic remark to the effect that 
his own natural bent, if he could have been undisturbed 
by current human needs, was rather towards literature 
than politics. The pretty home in Bedford Park in 
which he settled down after a not very successful 
lecturing tour in America, and in which he lived, with 
some quiet intervals in a Surrey village, to the end, 
was the bourne of all manner of helpless foreigners. 
Jews, Stundists, Poles, and Armenians sought Stepniak's 
board, and his powerful pen was always at their service. 
A long manuscript in his writing which he sent to me 
with the aim of securing wider publicity lies before me, 
and is full of painful reminders of what will go down to 
posterity as a pre-eminently shameful epoch of European 
history. It is the translation of the text of a " Protest 
addressed to the Great Powers of Europe by Kilikian 
Prisoners," dated from the central prison of Aleppo in 
August, 1892, and recites some of the infamous mis- 
deeds of the Turkish officials in the town of Zeitun, 
which, as long ago as 1866, had been driven into a state 
of incipient rebellion by the Moslem tyranny. Stepniak 
also watched the English labour movement with the 
utmost interest. 



244 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

It was due very largely to Stepniaks influence in 
his early life that the Russian radical propaganda 
developed out of the Anarchism of Bakunin in a general 
Socialistic direction. He was to the end a convinced 
Socialist, and he became a member of the Fabian 
Society. But, right or wrong, Stepniak's Socialism was 
a calm and reasoned intellectual conclusion. Nothing 
could be more untrue than to represent him as a fanatic. 
The division between the peasantist and the proletarian 
sections, which long weakened the movement in Russia, 
was contrary to all his instincts ; and, as he held that 
a union of these forces was essential to success, so also 
he insisted that no opportunity must be lost of co- 
operation between revolutionists and liberal opponents 
of the oligarchy. He was, in the best sense, a practical 
politician. He saw, even in the height of that awful 
time in which outrage was adopted as a deliberate policy 
in Russia, that the revolutionary movement must be 
guided into a political channel. In the calmer days of 
his English life his comments upon international and 
national politics were full of insight, judicial fairness, 
and common sense ; and a reviewer of his last book did 
him no more than justice when he said that in a Russian 
Parliament Stepniak would have found his way to the 
front rank by the simple force of his statesmanlike 
qualities. An instance at once of his fairness and 
his encyclopaedic knowledge may here be given. 
It has been said that his political tendency was 
. directly opposed to that of Bakunin, but, as one who 
knew the father of philosophical Anarchism and the 
whole circumstances of the controversy, he was both 
anxious and able to do him justice. I had a long con- 
versation with him on this subject dprojjos of the 
allegations made by M. Felix Dubois in his book, " The 
Anarchist Peril " ; and he decidedly denied the suggestion 



STEPNIAK AND TERRORISM 245 

that Bakunin was a wire-puller, a traitor, and a 
spy. He showed that Bakunin's Panslavism was a 
quite consistent democratic and radical creed, not in 
any way to be confused with the later Panslavism of 
autocracy and orthodoxy. He thought it ridiculous 
but perfectly honest, and held that Bakunin was faithful 
to his ideas to the end of his life. He went on to give 
me chapter and verse for the statement that Bakunin 
was never specially favoured either by the King of 
Saxony, the Austrian Government, or the Russian 
Government, and was never received with suspicion by 
the then Russian revolutionists in London. Bakunin's 
ideas, he added, had a vogue of only about four years 
in Russia (1874-8), and "it would not be too much 
to say that there is to-day no Anarchism at all in 
Russia." 

It was not alone the interest of his political experi- 
ences and knowledge that drew one to Stepniak's home. 
If it be a little difficult to accept his statement of his 
own intellectual preferences quoted above, it is still 
certain that he watched every literary and artistic 
movement of the day, and showed a very exceptional 
critical capacity. He was able to speak of most well- 
known English writers — especially of Thackeray and 
Dickens, and of George Meredith, by whom he had been 
very kindly received — with a familiarity and keenness of 
appreciation that put the average Englishman to shame ; 
and this shame became positive confusion as he passed 
from the great figures of our own literature to the writers, 
musicians, and artists of Germany and France. The 
clearest and most charming sketch of Russian literature 
I have met with was an extempore lecture which he 
gave to a little coterie of young Bohemians in London 
who revel in the wild title of " The Cemented Bricks." 
He was not always an effective lecturer. It is, after 



246 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

all, as a fertile writer that lie will chiefly be remembered, 
save for his active connection with the " dynamic 
period" of the revolutionary movement in Russia, of 
which it remains to speak. His novel, "The Career of 
a Nihilist," is, he told me, to a large extent auto- 
biographical. It is an open secret that it was only 
upon the eve of publication that he withdrew his name 
from the title-page of the Stundist novel, " The High- 
way of Sorrow," to which Miss Hesba Stretton's name 
is alone appended. His translated volume of stories by 
the Russian novelist Korolenko reminds me that it was 
at Stepniak's heterodox salon that I met more than one 
"legal" Russian; and that Dr. Brandes, the eminent 
Danish critic, and many another interesting figure, 
received the exile's hospitality. 

It is unfortunately now improbable that we shall 
ever have a full and accurate account of this extra- 
ordinary and romantic life. This involves less loss, 
perhaps, than it might in many a case, for the personal 
element is strong in most of his books, and, in " Under- 
ground Russia " and his novel, at least, we have many 
idealized and generalized pictures from his own ex- 
perience. It has, however, facilitated the circulation of 
mistaken and sometimes malicious stories of his career, 
which cannot but confuse the historical student. An 
attack, clearly vindictive, consisted in the circulation in 
the early part of 1894 of a pamphlet with the title 
" Russian Memorandum," and its substantial embodi- 
ment in an article over the signature " Ivanoff " in the 
New Review of January in that year. The pamphlet 
was dated " November, 1892 ; " but it reached a number 
of prominent men in London by post from Paris only 
fourteen months later. The Society of Friends of 
Russian Freedom was charged with raising funds " for 
the organization of dynamite conspiracies in Russia," 



STEPNIAK AND TERRORISM 247 

and Stepniak personally with pretending to accept 
English constitutionalism and taking English gold while 
he was inciting to deeds of violence in Russia in 
the Russian pamphlets issued by himself and his col- 
leagues of the Russian Free Press Fund. No unbiassed 
person who knew Stepniak could entertain for a moment 
the suspicion that he could be guilty of such baseness. 
As a matter of fact, he always held that men inside the 
Empire alone were, and could be, responsible for the form 
and guidance of the revolutionary movement, and that 
anything like incitement to outrage from the outside 
would be as cowardly as it would be futile. When this 
allegation appeared, he broke his rule of a dignified and 
scornful reticence as to all merely personal attacks by 
publishing an English translation of the pamphlets in 
question ; and these appeared, with a preface by Dr. 
Spence Watson and other supplementary matter, under 
the title of " Nihilism as it Is." 

As to Stepniak's attitude toward terrorism in the 
abstract, there is no doubt that his opinion underwent 
a development as the failure of the policy became 
evident, and as he grew more and more in apprecia- 
tion of English ideas and methods. He never really 
abandoned his first moral standpoint; but there is a 
considerable difference in tone between the rather wild 
glorification of extreme measures with which " Under- 
ground Russia," his first work, abounds, and the final 
pages of the book he completed just before his death. 
The difference is easily explained to any student by 
the change in the circumstances. 

There is, perhaps, nothing more difficult for the 
average burgess of a settled constitutional State to 
believe than that a conspirator — above all a terrorist 
— could be, after all, an essentially good man and a 
distinct moral force. It is well, on the whole, that this 



248 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

prejudice should exist, and that the toleration of war- 
fare and the privileges of the soldier's calling should 
be restricted to the authorized mercenaries of the 
nation. But it is necessary sometimes to recall that 
the line is quite an arbitrary one, and not to be drawn 
by rational men until all the circumstances of the 
individual case have been fully laid before the public 
mind and conscience. We Englishmen are but poorly 
equipped with the historic imagination necessary for 
this difficult judicial task ; but the tributes offered over 
the remains of Sergius Stepniak showed that British 
common sense is equal to the demand which even so 
exceptional a career and character make upon it. If 
we had less faith in the absorbent and sobering qualities 
of the English character, we might feel that there was 
danger in the promiscuous cultivation of this kind of 
sentiment. It would be too much to expect in every 
political exile either Stepniak's hearty regard for our 
institutions and ideas, or his personal dignity and 
worth, his combination of strength and gentleness, of 
resolution and judiciality. The generous welcome which, 
in the name of her own freedom, England offers to the 
outcasts of less fortunate lands is not, however, blind 
or unconditional. Personal intercourse with Stepniak 
during his life in this country bred spontaneously the 
conclusions which the independent student was to reach 
by his slower method. Stimulated by this intercourse, 
study has made possible something like an objective 
explanation of one of the most awful episodes of recent 
history. In Stepniak's career the period of active revo- 
lution seemed to be focussed and typified. He brought 
with him to these islands a section, as it were, from the 
life of his country ; and it was at once his and our good 
fortune that he was able to complete a record of personal 
and national development such as few political leaders 



STEPNIAK AND TERRORISM 249 

can leave behind them for their own justification and 
the enlightenment of history. 

Three of Stepniak's literary treatments of terrorism 
lie before me as I write. The first is in the crude, 
though thrilling, rhapsodies of " Underground Russia." 
It must be remembered, in justice to this work — by 
which its author was perhaps most widely known — that 
it was written from the outside in the feverish days 
during which the battle it described was reaching its 
climax, and that it was written as a feuilleton for an 
Italian paper. A soberer view, in the Contemporary 
for March, 1884, distinguishes very clearly between 
dynamite outrages in the free West and the only 
method still available in Russia against an unscrupulous 
despotism. In the work which he had issued but a few 
days before his death, " King Log and King Stork," the 
influence of maturer reflection and of the English climate 
is still more evident. On the following words Stepniak's 
claim and that of his fellows to the sympathy of good 
and humane men and women may be said finally to 
rest. "Terrorism," he wrote, "is the worst of all 
methods of revolutionary warfare, and there is only 
one thing that is worse still — slavish submissiveness 
and the absence of any protest. We could not look 
upon the revival of it otherwise than as a disgrace for 
Russia. Yet it would be a worse disgrace for Russia 
if she is not able to produce by way of protest anything 
stronger than terrorism. Now, there is only one means 
of preventing the possibility of such an outburst, and 
of turning to good account popular movements when 
they begin. It is for the whole of the Liberal Oppo- 
sition to avail itself of the present temporary lull, and 
by a broad and energetic action to compel the unsettled 
Government to change the drift of its politics." 

At the time of his death, Prince Kropotkin thus 



2 5 o RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

wrote of him : " He believed in a popular movement ; 
at the same time, however, he believed that it should 
be met by a similar movement among educated people. 
The slavish spirit was odious to him in every form. He 
hated oppression of the individual wherever he met it, 
in public life, in the family, in a political party. The 
feeling of personal fear was altogether unknown to him. 
The feeling of self-conceit did not exist in him, even in 
germ. He did not understand narrow party feeling ; 
he always held firmly to his opinions, but he was deeply 
conscious that no great cause is ever affected by one 
party alone, that, for the success of great social changes, 
the efforts of different parties are necessary, that every 
one of them is indispensable, and that they must not 
strive to stifle one another, but march, each in its own 
way, to one common aim, to liberation. And all this 
emanated in him, not from a theory, but from the very 
depth of his nature, from the feeling of justice which 
was engendered in him. When a man of different 
opinions was talking to him, his intelligent and kindly 
eyes gleamed with that thorough understanding of the 
most subtle movements of mind and heart, that re- 
sponsiveness to another man's views and feelings, of 
which only great poets are capable." 

The late Professor York Powell wrote : " It was as 
a charming companion and a most appreciative student 
and critic of literature that Sergius Stepniak was known 
to me. He was absolutely sincere, sound in his judg- 
ment, and anxious to get at the fairest point of view. 
In these characteristics and in his wide reading in many 
tongues (he could read, I believe, every European lan- 
guage save Bask), he reminded me of my master, 
G-udbrand Vigfusson. He was quick, too, in seizing 
the ideas of others and understanding their aspects. 
He was either silent, or he spoke frankly and directly, 



STEPNIAK AND TERRORISM 251 

never hesitating to speak the whole truth as he under- 
stood it and felt it, but with a noble kind of courtesy 
that could but appease the most sensitive. He was so 
hard-working, so earnest, so stern to himself, so sympa- 
thetic, that I think he had it in him to have done good 
work in literature later on. A truthful, unselfish, up- 
right, warm-hearted, and determined man, reasonable 
in all his thoughts and ways, as free from vanity and 
every base taint as any being I have known." 

Dr. Spence Watson gives us another glimpse of this 
"beautiful, fertilizing, and powerful soul": "When 
the news reached this county that Madame Sigida had 
succumbed beneath the cruelties and indignities she had 
suffered, Stepniak suffered terribly. I then saw the 
man who had been the moving spirit of the great 
Terrorist movement, the war of revenge waged against 
the oppressors by the oppressed ; the stern, bold, deter- 
mined avenger of the wrong done by brutal power. It 
was a grand, a terrible revelation." Dr. Watson adds : " I 
do not wish to speak about the loss the cause of freedom 
everywhere sustained. Our great men are mortal, their 
work is immortal. The lot of an exile is a hard one. He 
has friends about him, but where are those of his youth ? 
The landscape is fair, but it is not that of home. How- 
ever he may be respected and beloved in the land of 
his adoption, it is, at the best, a strange land. And 
it is sometimes cruel. The privations, the trials, the 
indignities, the annoyances, to which these men are 
subjected, are without number. Watched by foreign 
spies, visited and cross- questioned by English policemen 
whose friendship with the foreign spies is most dis- 
tasteful to all right-minded citizens, life is made harder 
than it need be, though it must be hard at best. But 
Stepniak seemed to rise above all these things. They 
rolled away from him and left no trace of even momentary 



252 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

annoyance. His mind was in his work ; his heart was 
with his country ; for her he was thankful to toil 
and strive. He was nothing, the Russian people were 
all, and, first and foremost, the Russian peasant, for his 
need was greatest. In their service and for them he 
lived ; in their service he laid down his life." 

I close with some words from the tribute of his 
comrade, F. Volkhovsky, to the memory of " the Bayard 
of the Russian Revolution": " The whole world be- 
wails the loss, but the feeling of us Russians is one of 
double anguish. Not only have we lost in him a man 
who proved by his whole life that Russians are not born 
slaves, who would endure anything, any outrage, any 
humiliation, like dumb sheep ; not only have we lost in 
him one who contributed much to the acknowledgment 
of the Russian national genius by other nationalities 
and made our ties of brotherhood with them stronger, 
but we have also to bear the feeling that in his native 
country there is not even so much soil for such a man 
as is required for his remains to rest in. There is only 
one consolation in this bitter thought : that, while 
Stepniak was robbed of his country by those who robbed 
her of everything they could, he has found a larger 
fatherland in the hearts of all the oppressed and all 
the generous ones of the whole world, his own people 
included. Let us not offend his memory, then, by 
even one moment of despair." 



CHAPTER XVIII 

THE NEW GENERATION : DR. SOSKICE ; MARK BROIDO 

To short-sighted persons the revolutionary movement 
appeared to have passed away when the episode of the 
Terror closed. Certain organizations collapsed, it is true, 
for the lack of effective support from the masses ; and 
the movement gradually assumed a new complexion as 
new forces and new circumstances gradually revealed 
themselves. Had it depended only upon a few leading 
figures, it would have been absolutely wiped out by 
the first merciless revenge of those in power. But it 
was always sporadic, dependent upon local emergencies 
and provocations, never centralized to any consider- 
able degree. There were during the last years of 
Alexander III. a few political plots, a great many 
peasant riots and University disturbances, labour strikes, 
and fresh evidence of sedition in the army. The ravages 
of cholera and famine gave a new impetus to the 
seething discontent which was found on every side ; 
and financial embarrassments and the direction of new 
light into the dark places of the Empire worked together 
seriously to sap the outside resources of the Tsardom. 
The protest of the Liberal constitutionalists, and 
especially of the zemstvo men, though ineffective, never 
ceased. But the rapid development of events has been 
due, in the first place, to the younger intelligemla 
gathered together in and around the Universities and 

253 



254 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

the professions dependent on higher education, and in the 
second place to the increasing collective activity of the 
town workmen, dating from the great and successful 
strike in St. Petersburg in 1896, the year of the corona- 
tion of Nicholas II. At the same time there have been 
numerous outbreaks among the disillusioned peasantry ; 
and it should be added that the rise of the newer 
Nonconformist bodies and the spread of Leo Tolstoy's 
teaching, though apparently antagonistic to a political 
revolution, have really helped to produce a social 
awakening which was bound to have a political 
outcome. 

University " disturbances " — the official word for 
public meetings — have for many years past been a 
prominent feature in the news from the dark Empire, 
to the confounding of the reader unacquainted with 
Russian history and the conditions of Russian life. The 
only other kind of disturbance of which we hear much 
is the strike of workmen ; that, however, is so common 
an event at home that our only wonder is that it is not 
more frequent in a country where capitalism is in open 
alliance with the civil and military authorities, and where 
industrial grievances are of a much grosser character 
than any we know. But what is the meaning of this 
perpetual ferment in the Russian Universities ? The 
British undergraduate is not exactly a lamb, but when 
he sets out to daub a statue, to mob a statesman, or 
to hoot a music-hall singer, he does not expect any 
public sympathy ; and, in fact, when we hear of these 
escapades we think longingly of the nursery birch 
and the village horse-pond. Why should we be asked 
to sympathize with these Russian students and 
teachers ? 

"Well, the Russian University reflects the peculiarity 
of Russian life. Here is a society which has given some 



THE NEW GENERATION 255 

of the most conspicuous talents to the service of science, 
art, and morals, a society which follows and participates 
in the progress of the world's thought, and yet has no 
feeedom of thought or activity in its own sphere ; a 
society which is now, as it was a century ago, at the 
mercy of the policeman and the censor. It is com- 
paratively easy to dragoon, because it is numerically 
weak and socially removed from the life of the work- 
man and peasantry, who make up nine -tenths of the 
population. Against a thoroughly militarized bureau- 
cracy, the middle- class unit is helpless. The revolu- 
tionists of the late seventies and earlier eighties scored 
the sort of success the Boers obtained for a time in 
South Africa — the success of brains and devotion, which 
discredits and damages centralized mechanical power, 
but which must be overwhelmed in the long run. When 
and where the units are gathered in large numbers, how- 
ever, there is always the material for new explosions. 
The factory and University are almost the only con- 
siderable social aggregations which are to be met with 
in Kussian life ; and the factories and the Universities 
are accordingly permanent centres of that effervescence 
which can find no other outlet. To say nothing of the 
fact that the elder Universities in this country are 
directly represented in Parliament, to say nothing of 
the political debates for which their " Unions" are 
famous, every British undergraduate who has a true 
conception of society will regard his University career 
as a preparation for the free use and enjoyment of those 
political rights which he will presently share with his 
fellow-citizens. The Kussian student has to meet the 
same tests in regard to general culture as his Western 
contemporary, but he is faced by the crushing fact that 
in his after life the free exercise of his talents will be 
ruthlessly forbidden to him. It is only the aged and 



256 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

impotent who can be expected to accept, without a 
murmur, this decree of perpetual exclusion from ranges 
of social activity to which the poorest and most ignorant 
in every other European country have access. Youth 
sees and feels even under the shadow of an oligarchy. 
As Stepniak said, in his " Russia under the Tsars," 
" When a government in possession of despotic power 
punishes as a crime the least show of opposition to its 
will, nearly all whom age has made cautious or wealth 
selfish, or who have given hostages to fortune, shun the 
strife. It is then that the leaders of the forlorn hope 
turn to the young, who, though they may lack know- 
ledge aod experience, are rarely wanting either in 
courage or devotion. It was thus in Italy at the time 
of the Mazzinian conspiracies ; in Spain at the time of 
Riego and Queroga ; in Germany at the time of the 
Tugenbund, and again about the middle of the nine- 
teenth century. If the transfer of the centre of political 
gravity to the young is more marked in Russia than it 
has been elsewhere, it is that the determining causes 
have been more powerful in their action and more 
prolonged in their duration." 

Apart from the restrictions to which society at large 
is subjected, the Universities have always suffered the 
most rigorous administrative supervision and perpetual 
interference by the police agents, for whom every centre 
of thought is a centre of sedition, actual or potential. 
These petty tyrannies, obstinately continued throughout 
the last forty years, have entered into the tradition of 
society, and have given birth to a peculiar but regular 
series of reactions. At best, the Russian University is 
a tool and dependency of the despotic State, without 
any independence ; the University professor a State 
officer, a tchinovnik, always in terror of denunciation 
for heresy or "political untrustworthiness." The old 



THE NEW GENERATION 257 

story of the instruction to the professor of mathematics, 

that in speaking of triangles he should seek to raise the 

hearts of his pupils to heaven by recalling to them, 

through this image, the mystery of the Holy Trinity, is 

a piece of obscurantism not quite impossible even in 

this later day. " The University, in the eyes of the 

Government," said Tikhomirov in his " La Kussie 

Politique et Sociale," "is one of the bureaux of the 

Department of Public Opinion of which Napoleon I. 

dreamed." But the view of the Government is one 

thing, the view of the youth, and of a good many 

others, too, of educated Eussia, quite another. Hence 

a constant friction between the mass of undergraduates, 

supported ^ore or less openly by many professors, and 

the civil authorities, and a constant hostility to any 

show of independence in the professorate, resulting on 

the one hand in eviction of recalcitrant professors 

(Stassulevitch, Eostomarov, Spassovitch, Dragomanov, 

Pipin, are names of some of the more celebrated victims 

of this kind), and on the other the reduction of the 

University staffs to a condition of intellectual mediocrity 

and moral impotence. And still the University is looked 

upon as the Mecca of youthful effort and aspiration. 

Most of the students come from comparatively, or even 

positively, poor families of the middle class or the petty 

nobility. They are quite ready to endure the extremes 

of penury if they can but manage to attend their classes. 

The teaching staff may be a feeble imitation of its 

Western prototypes ; but there are the library, the 

museum, the laboratory ; there are the specially light 

conditions of military service ; there is liberty from the 

oppressive restrictions of the old-fashioned household ; 

above all, there is the possibility of equal fellowship 

and friendship not to be found otherwise. 

Under a rule such as that of the Russian bureaucracy, 



258 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

the rest is natural consequence. The development 
of a certain corporate spirit in a university would be 
inevitable, even if it had not behind it, as it has in 
every Russian city, a long history of struggle and 
sacrifice. A few students meet for a simple discussion ; 
if the police do not gather under the windows, it is only 
because they have spies inside. A forbidden book is 
found, or some criticism of the powers-that-be is over- 
heard ; arrest follows, and then imprisonment or depor- 
tation. The fellow-students of the victim gather together 
to discuss his case ; their meeting is broken up by the 
police, and more arrests follow. Or the undergraduates 
wish to march in procession to the grave of some of 
the many leaders of Russian thought who have been 
murdered by the gaolers of the Autocracy ; their pro- 
cession is broken up by Cossacks armed with whips. A 
current of sympathetic discontent runs through educated 
society, and breaks out in other universities. Meetings 
are held, petitions are drawn up ; then reprisals take 
place on the grand scale : scores, or even hundreds, of 
students are expelled, which means that their careers 
are ruined; the "ringleaders" are still more severely 
punished. A " students' strike" breaks out simul- 
taneously in the large towns — St. Petersburg, Kiev, 
Moscow, Kharkov, Kazan. This is by no means 
a rare occurrence; in the troubles of 1899 there were 
estimated to be 30,000 students on strike. So the duel 
drags on. 

But four years ago, while it was making the false 
boast of having "abolished Siberian exile," the Tsars 
Government decided on a new experiment in coercion, 
one which, after all, was as old as the "Emperor in 
jack-boots," Nicholas I. About 200 undergraduates — ■ 
183 of Kiev and 25 of St. Petersburg — were drafted 
into compulsory military service for periods of one, two, 



THE NEW GENERATION 259 

or three years, for having taken part in certain meetings 
at which their grievances were ventilated : offences 
which might have been dealt with by Justices of the 
Peace, under Russian law, instead of by this absolutely 
arbitrary process, and for which the legal penalty could 
not have exceeded fines of a hundred roubles or brief 
terms of imprisonment. It is difficult for us English- 
men to appreciate the meaning of exile to the barracks 
of Eastern Asia ; but it at once became evident that 
Kussians of the educational class regarded it with, at 
least, as much horror as we should regard the rustication 
of a party of Oxford or Cambridge undergraduates to 
an Indian cantonment. The British army would not be 
exactly an ideal milieu for the completion of a Univer- 
sity career ; but the fate of Kussian lads in the isolation 
of a Far Eastern outpost is indeed matter for pity and 
indignation. Their friends appealed, and not vainly, to 
" the conscience of the whole civilized world." In the 
consequent protest France led the way, as it was alto- 
gether best that she should. Over forty professors of 
French universities addressed to the professors of the 
Russian universities a letter, in which they pointedly 
<c declined all solidarity" with men who had not only 
sacrificed the independence of the university in matters of 
internal discipline, but 'assisted the soldiery in a barbarous 
interference, and in over-riding the common law of the 
land. Similar protests arose in other lands. In Russia the 
incident gave rise to a crisis of the first magnitude, very 
large numbers of people of different classes taking part 
in open demonstrations against the authorities. St. 
Petersburg seethed with active discontent, and repeated 
demonstrations took place. On March 5, 1901 (the 
anniversary of the emancipation of the serfs), three 
hundred arrests were made, and on March 17 a peaceful 
gathering before and inside the Kazan Cathedral was 



260 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

brutally attacked by Cossacks and police, eight or more 
students, male and female, being killed, scores injured, 
and over seven hundred made prisoners. The wide space 
in front of the semi-circular colonnade of the church, 
which is situated in the middle of the chief street of the 
city, would require thousands of people to fill it. In 
this square " the Cossacks with their heavy whips up- 
lifted, the gendarmes with drawn swords, the police who 
unexpectedly poured out from all adjacent streets and 
courtyards, encircled the populace — students, merchants, 
children, officers, women, workmen — and impetuously 
drove them towards the Cathedral. A cry of horror 
resounded ; people fell down, got up, and flew to the 
church ; then they turned, and tried to make a stand 
in self-defence, and flung snow-balls, snow-shoes, sticks, 
etc. . . , The crowd, pressed by the Cossacks, tried to 
find shelter in the church ; but the assailants followed 
on their heels, and General Kleygels ordered the doors 
to be closed. The massacre was continued in the 
Cathedral. But there the people found s©me furniture, 
heavy candlesticks, banners, etc." Another eye-witness 
says : " The sacred building resounded with the cries of 
people being trampled under foot. A bitter struggle 
began between students and police ; candlesticks were 
overthrown, and the holy pictures damaged amid the 
horrible cries of wounded and trodden men. ... A 
hand-to-hand fight was going on on the church steps. 
Two regiments of Cossacks were there, slashing at the 
crowd with their short whips. Luckily, I was borne 
right out into the street, where at all points crowds of 
police were to be seen. The balconies and windows of 
the houses were full of people. . . . Struggles were 
visible at all points ; the crowd seemed nothing but a 
fighting mass of shouting, struggling soldiers, police, 
students, and general public." According to a statement 



THE NEW GENERATION 261 

signed by forty-five representative literary men, 
some of whom were eye-witnesses of these events — a 
protest which was officially answered by the suppression 
of the " "Writers' Union " — the " slaughter of defenceless 
people was carried out in such a systematic and organized 
manner that there can be no mistake about its having 
been premeditated. . . . Beaten and utterly exhausted 
women, who gave themselves up voluntarily to the police, 
were arrested, and on the spot subjected to further ill- 
treatment. Those who fell were beaten until they were 
dead or senseless.'' " These," the writers continue, " are 
not reports originating from unknown sources. Some 
of us who joined in begging for mercy for the innocent 
people were either arrested or beaten." One of the 
wounded was the statistician and economist, Annensky ; 
two of those arrested were well-known authors — P. von 
Struve and T. Baranovsky. Lieutenant-General Via- 
zemsky, formerly head of the Imperial Domains Depart- 
ment, sent a protest to the Tsar. Professor Milukov 
and other well-known public men addressed a petition, 
and General Dragomirov sent a memorandum to the 
Tsar against the measure of penal conscription, which 
was one of the chief causes of the trouble ; and, in fact, 
this form of punishment was soon abandoned. 

Nor was the capital only affected. In Moscow and 
Kharkov especially there were occurrences of a similar 
character, though without the infliction of such grave 
injuries. In Moscow, for the first time in Kussian 
history, real street barricades were raised against the 
police and Cossacks, the students and mill-hands 
making common cause. The prisons were filled with 
" political " offenders, and the routine of the higher 
educational establishments throughout the country 
was so disastrously interrupted that special measures 
of accommodation had to be concerted by the Minister 



262 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

of Education. On March 23 and April 1, two students, 
named Proskuryakov and Perovsky, who had been 
drafted into regiments, committed suicide ; and, at the 
same time, two friends of the former, an officer named 
Kutnev and Miss Smirnova, took their own lives. On 
Match 9, Piratov, one of the students forced into the 
ranks, was shot in Kiev for having struck an officer in 
reply to insulting language ; and, a few days later, 
another Kiev student, named Podgoretsky, suffered the 
same fate. These events, immediately a result of the 
operation of the "Temporary Rules" of July, 1899, 
had a much wider significance for a society that had 
again reached the point of exasperation. Everywhere 
there were signs of a new temper abroad, a new courage 
and decisiveness in the protest against the doings of the 
oligarchy. In the old days the peasants had generally 
stood aloof from the struggle for liberty, suspecting any 
movement of the class from which the hated tchinovniks 
are recruited, and to which the landlords are allied, the 
men who had slain the " Tsar-Liberator." Much the 
same feelings of distrust affected, though in a smaller 
degree, the factory workers, who, indeed, could then 
scarcely be regarded as a separate class, most of them 
still holding their plots of land, and moving to and 
fro between town and country. But fifteen years 
had worked a great transformation. The myth of a 
paternal Tsar, prevented from giving the people what 
they needed by the officials and the landlords, has 
slowly faded away before the evidence of facts in the 
last two reigns. In the students' demonstrations of 
1901, thousands of workmen joined, for the first time. 
The peasants saw that it was now the students, gathered 
to commemorate the Liberation in one of the national 
Cathedrals, who were beaten and otherwise maltreated. 
At the same time every section of educated society, the 



THE NEW GENERATION 26% 



o 



leaders of the zemstvos and municipalities, professional 
men, authors, journalists, Academicians, and even some 
of the nobility, joined with a new boldness in the demand 
for guarantees of public and personal security. The ex- 
communication of Tolstoy, and the old man's plain reply 
to the Holy Synod, made him one of the heroes of the 
day. From Kiev a telegram with a thousand signatures 
was sent, congratulating him on his recovery from 
illness ; hundreds of people wrote asking to be ex- 
communicated alonsj with him. Never before in Eussian 
history had the opposition assumed such great dimen- 
sions, so broad a representative character, or so active 
and independent a spirit. 

The old reply was given. Wholesale arrests of 
workmen and students were made in the great towns. 
Practically the whole staff of the two progressive 
monthlies, Zhizn ("Life") and Mir Bozlnj ("God's 
World "), and several professors, including the historian 
Myakotin and the anatomist Leshaft, were imprisoned. 
The censorship of the daily press became sterner ; ex- 
professor Tugan-Baranovsky, and the well-known writer, 
Peter Struve (who has since established at Stuttgart the 
powerful constitutionalist review, Osvoboydenye), were 
" administratively " exiled. At Nijni, Maxim Gorky 
and fourteen persons on the staff of the local paper, 
Listok, were taken into custody. The state of siege 
was extended over half the population of European 
Eussia. During the spring of 1902, serious dis- 
turbances took place in the provinces of Poltava, 
Kharkov, and Saratov, the famishing peasants 
plundering many large estates. This led to a very 
panic of coercion. Batches of villagers were first 
flogged and afterwards imprisoned ; the chief terrorist, 
Prince Obolensky, Governor of Kharkov (now Governor- 
General of Finland), was decorated and thanked by the 



264 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

Tsar, who himself delivered a threatening oration to a 
humble deputation of elders; and a heavy charge by 
way of indemnity was imposed on the localities 
concerned. 

It is impossible to follow in further detail the course 
of the ever-widening struggle. Two main results were 
soon apparent. The first was a revival of terrorism of 
which I shall speak in the following chapters ; the second 
a vast expansion of the spirit of revolt, especially among 
the workmen and intellectuals. This is dimly reflected 
in a report of M. Muraviev, Minister of Justice, to the 
Council of State, on January 28, 1904, containing some 
important statistics and proposing some small modifica- 
tions in procedure in political trials for embodiment in 
the new Penal Code. 

The existing defects in this procedure, said the 
Minister, " are felt at present with the more force 
because of the considerable recrudescence in recent 
years of the socialist-revolutionary propaganda. The 
number of political crimes has increased in an extra- 
ordinary manner. It must be pointed out especially 
that the authorization (introduced by the law of May 
19, 1871, as a provisional measure) to deal in certain 
cases with political offences by administrative order 
instead of referring them to the courts, as required by 
the judicial statutes of 1864, has, in fact, become the 
general rule with very rare exceptions. 

" A striking picture of this state of things is pre- 
sented by the following statistics gathered from the 
archives of the Ministry of Justice and relating to 
political crimes in the years 1894-1903 : — 



THE NEW GENERATION 



265 



Years. 



1. Political cases regis- 

tered by the Ministry 
of Justice . 

2. Persons prosecuted 

3. Cases authorized by 

personal order of the 
Tsar .... 

4. Persons prosecuted in 

these 

5. Political Inquiries by 

Military Tribunals . 

6. Persons prosecuted in 

these . 

7. Cases interrupted or 

annulled . . 

8. Persons prosecuted in 

annulled cases . 

Sentences — 
Foreigners expelled 
Deported to Siberia . 
Deported to non-Siberian 

districts 
Subjected to police sur- 
veillance 
Imprisoned 

Placed in Houses of De- 
tention .... 



1894 


1895 


1896 


1897 


1898 


1899 


1900 


1901 


1902 


158 
919 


259 
944 


309 
1668 


289 
427 


257 
1144 


338 

1884 


384 
1580 


520 
1784 


1053 
3744 


56 


90 


67 


122 


149 


166 


144 


250 


347 


559 


623 


561 


1474 


1004 


1325 


1363 


1238 


1678 


3 


2 


3 


4 


1 


2 


4 


1 


5 






2 


4 


11 


1 


4 


10 


3 


5 


61 


175 


180 


180 


108 


156 


119 


197 


364 


120 


407 


335 


499 


135 


82 


162 


310 


303 


5 
21 


6 

42 


1 
53 


11 
117 


2 

47 


11 

49 


1 
49 


9 
38 


10 
115 


34 


66 


42 


79 


119 


105 


85 


51 


77 


244 
156 


219 
104 


218 
105 


767 
148 


340 
162 


308 
108 


618 
57 


486 
203 


193 
362 


29 


20 


16 


92 


88 


195 


102 


141 


217 



1903 



1988 
5590 



1522 

6405 

10 

45 

791 

429 



31 
910 

592 

1268 
332 

845 



" It will be seen from these details, firstly, that the 
number of political cases has increased during the last 
ten years in an enormous proportion, and, secondly, that 
all these cases, with very few exceptions, have been 
dealt with by administrative order. It may be pointed 
out that during the period 1894-1901 no political case 
was referred to the courts in accordance with the rule 
anticipated by our code of criminal procedure. It 
is only in 1902 that there have been referred to mixed 
tribunals three cases, and in 1903 twelve. As to 
the cases referred under exceptional laws to military 
tribunals the number is insignificant and does not 
exceed from three to five per annum. It will be re- 
marked also that the number of prosecutions ordained 
by his Imperial Majesty, which was only 56 in 1894, 
has augmented in 1903 to 1533, that is to say, had 
increased 27 times." 



266 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

While admitting the departure from normal law 
here shown, M. Muraviev did not propose any sub- 
stantial reform of the system. 

A better representative of this new generation of 
the revolutionary movement could not be found than 
Dr. David Soskice, the brilliant young barrister and 
economist who succeeded Mr. Felix Volkhovsky about a 
year ago as editor of Free Russia. Mr. Soskice is a 
doctor of law, a man of wide culture and fine spirit, 
as unlike the conventional conspirator as possible ; and 
it is characteristic that, after several years* acquaintance, 
it was only by direct inquiry that I received from him 
information of the experiences which I now print for 
the first time in his own words. 

" The earliest impression I recall of the struggle 
between the Government and its victims," he said, in 
reply to my questions, " was when, as a schoolboy of 
the second standard in the gymnasium in Kiev, I heard 
of three young students being hanged, and two more 
a little later,* for no other reason than that they had 
been caught distributing socialist literature — pamphlets 
that would be considered quite innocent in England. 
That was in 1880. I remember that when I was only 
fourteen years old I considered myself a Socialist — or 
a Revolutionist, which is the same thing ; and before 
I was fifteen I witnessed the anti-Jewish pogrom of 
1881 in Kiev, and that deepened the tendency. In the 
following years I often hid revolutionists who were 
trying to escape, and took part in the meetings of 
secret circles, helped to organize secret libraries and 
funds, and to get into effective contact with the work- 
men. Those were the last days of the Narodnaya 

* Three " politicals " were hanged in Kiev in 1879 : Bilehansky, Gorsky, 
and Gobst; and two in 1880, for circulating a revolutionary proclamation — 
Losinsky, a soldier ; and Eosovsky, a student nineteen years of age. 



THE NEW GENERATION 267 

Volya ; the movement was in a state of transition, and 
our circle worked out its own programme. Between 
1883 and 1885 I was constantly watched by spies as 
well as by the overseers of the gymnasium, and my 
rooms were repeatedly searched. In 1884 1 was arrested 
for the first time, but soon released. I then entered 
the University of Kiev as a law student, and took part 
in the students' agitation of 1884, when Delyanov, the 
Minister of Education, was attacked with stones. The 
University was closed, and I and others were expelled. 
Six months later I was permitted to enter the Uni- 
versity again ; and I continued to take part in the 
revolutionary movement. In 1885 there were further 
students' troubles ; and in order to escape another ex- 
pulsion I moved to St. Petersburg, and entered the 
University there. In November of 1886 there was a 
great political demonstration in the capital, in the 
form of a tribute to the memory of our great critic 
Dobrolubov ; and a peaceful crowd was surrounded by 
Cossacks and kept standing for hours in the frosty 
streets, while about forty persons were arrested. I 
was exiled, among others, to Kazan ; and here again 
I joined the revolutionary movement. Permission to 
enter the University was refused me, and at the end 
of the winter I was ordered to leave the city. On 
passing through Kiev for the South, I was again arrested, 
along with my mother ; but, after a careful search and 
investigation, was released again. We now settled in 
Ludzk under police supervision, with the obligation, 
that is, of reporting whither I was going on leaving 
any town. This soon became intolerable, and we moved 
again, giving our destination as Kazan, but really going 
to Odessa. Here I at once asked permission to enter 
for my final examination ; and in three months, nothing 
having yet transpired against me, I had passed the final 



268 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

law examination with honours and taken the doctor- 
of-laws degree. 

"During this time I took an energetic part in the 
labour propaganda and in meetings of students' and 
other circles. I left Odessa in the spring of 1889 for 
Moscow, there to be called to the bar. A week after, 
when I had taken apartments and was about to be 
called, the okhrana otdelenye * summoned me to give an 
account of myself. They announced that three years 
before I had been forbidden to live in St. Petersburg, 
Moscow, and Warsaw, or in the three provinces of the 
same names. When I said I had never been told of 
such a sentence, they replied that there had been no 
need to inform me, but that now I must leave at once. 
A special pristav (police-sergeant) was instructed to see 
me away from Moscow, and he told me in confidence 
that the police had been greatly upset by my disap- 
pearance from Ludzk, and had telegraphed hither and 
thither to discover my whereabouts. I now returned 
to Kazan, and, the local police not yet having informa- 
tion about me, was duly called to the bar. All available 
time I gave to the work of organizing an independent 
party among the workmen, students, elementary school 
teachers, military officers, and the younger clergy in 
the Ecclesiastical Academy. In a single year the 
organization progressed marvellously, and enlisted 
several hundreds of energetic members. I did not 
myself believe in terrorism at all, but the tradition of 
terrorist action was very strong, and therefore it was 
included in our programme, subject, however, to strict 
conditions and limitations. In a few months my 
physical strength gave way. I had to plead many 

* This special force is an autocracy in itself, superior both to the gen- 
darmerie and the ordinary police. The notorious Zubatov was afterwards its 
head. 



THE NEW GENERATION 269 

cases in the courts as a barrister, to write articles in 
two papers to whose staff I belonged, and to attend at 
night meetings of numerous secret circles at which I 
had to speak or lecture. All this I had to do under 
the constant risk of arrest ; not only was I regularly 
watched by spies, and my articles disfigured by the 
censor, but one day in court the judge was warned by 
the local colonel of gendarmes that I was the centre of 
a nest of revolutionists. 

" In May, 1890, I became physically exhausted and 
fell ill with inflammation of the lungs. I then left Kazan 
for Kiev, hoping for a cure amid the peace of the neigh- 
bouring pine woods. After five weeks of rest, a detach- 
ment of gendarmes descended upon my villa at night, 
and, after a thorough search of the place, took me to 
the city, and locked me up in an underground dungeon 
in the police-station. The cell was about nine feet long 
by four or five broad ; the air was stifling, and a tiny 
grated window just under the ceiling and on a level 
with the ground admitted only a feeble light. Here I 
was kept for three days and nights, no charge being 
preferred ; and then I was taken away under guard of 
two gendarmes to St. Petersburg. The railway journey 
occupied three days and nights, and during a stoppage 
of a few hours in Moscow I was placed in a cold damp 
cell in the Taganka prison. In the capital I first spent 
six weeks of comparative comfort and contentment in 
the ' House of Preventive Detention,' working hard at 
philosophy books from the excellent library. Still no 
specific charge was lodged against me, and I knew of no 
reason for my imprisonment. 

" One night the guard suddenly came into my cell 
and ordered me to collect my things and accompany 
him to the office. My heart leaped ; so, I thought, it is 
liberty at last ! In the office I found an amiable colonel 



270 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

of gendarmes and the governor of the prison. I asked 
whether I was to be released, but could only get an 
evasive answer. For three hours I was kept in the 
office ; and then, it being near midnight, I was placed 
in a closed carriage with the colonel by my side, two 
gendarmes on the opposite seat, and another beside 
the driver. 

" I still did not guess where we were going, till at 
last, while crossing the Neva Bridge in the direction of 
the gloomy fortress, the colonel suddenly exclaimed, 
1 Now do you know ? ' ' Where ? ' I asked. ' To the 
Petropavlovsk fortress.' ' Has the Government decided 
to murder me, then?' I broke out in uncontrollable 
anger. But the colonel only replied complacently that 
the Devil is not as black as he is painted. 

"I will not attempt to recall the gloomy forebodings 
that passed through my mind as I thought of the victims 
who had preceded me to this horrible place — from the 
Princess Tarakanova, who was entombed here by the 
Empress Catherine, and was drowned in her cell during 
an inundation, down to Netchayev, who was chained to 
the wall, and the propagandists of twenty years earlier. 
After passing through rows of military men and down 
long dark corridors, I stood at last in presence of 
Col. Lyestnik, the commandant. He conducted me to 
a large and extremely cold and damp cell in the 
Trubetskoy ravelin — perhaps the very cell in which 
Maxim Gorky was confined a few months ago—and I 
was at once ordered to undress and subjected to a search 
which made my blood boil. Surrounded by guards, 
there was of course no possibility of resistance. An old 
torn linen shirt and trousers, white cotton socks, a kind 
of thin gown, and a pair of yellow felt slippers were 
oiven me. On my protesting, I received a new shirt, 
and then I was taken to another large but malodorous 



THE NEW GENERATION 271 

cell, the distempered walls of which were marked with 
damp spots. Here I passed a full year. 

" Generally, the conditions of imprisonment in the 
fortress are still as they were described by Kropotkin. 
Every day I had a few minutes' walk in the courtyard, 
and once a month a short steam bath. Perhaps the 
supply of books is better than of old, and I was allowed 
to buy books passed by the censor. But the torture of 
close solitary confinement, aggravated by thought of 
the possibilities of a regime both inhuman and illegal, 
remains. The guards are absolutely mute, communicat- 
ing only by signs, and as they too wear soft slippers, 
not even a footfall breaks the dead silence ; so that at 
length one's hearing becomes so sensitive that — do not 
think I am exaggerating — the flickering of the little 
night-lamp sometimes startled me like the firing of 
guns. You, happy man, would never think of the 
little things that count in this underground existence. 
One of the tasks of the guard who sits outside the door 
of your cell all night is to go through the prison books 
searching for marks made by prisoners attempting to 
communicate with each other. They are not always 
successful in finding them; but they are often successful 
in keeping their unhappy neighbour inside the cell 
awake for hours by the flick- flick of the turning pages. 
And the struggle to preserve one's health and sanity ! 
Though I danced every day for an hour or two, after 
two or three months I began to suffer from scurvy. 

" During this year I was taken twice to the Okhrana 
Otdelenye for examination, and was shown photographs 
of persons I knew, but whose acquaintance I of course 
disowned. Still no charge was preferred against me. 
At the end of the year my own clothes were suddenly 
returned to me, and I was taken back in charge of the 
same colonel of gendarmes to the House of Preliminary 



272 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

Detention. I was now informed that the preliminary 
inquiry was finished, and that I should be detained here 
till my case passed through the stage of judicial inquiry. 
In this prison, accordingly, I was kept for another year. 
Then, the judicial inquiry being stated to be concluded, 
I was transferred to the ' Cross ' hard labour prison, a 
paper being read to me, the effect of which was that the 
political criminal, David Wolfov Soskice, barrister and 
doctor of law (candidat prav), was condemned by order 
of the Tsar to one year's imprisonment, with three 
years' subsequent exile under police surveillance. So I 
spent a third year in durance vile, the last three months 
of it in the prison hospital, without being put upon 
trial, and without even having a definite charge preferred 
against me. 

" After the completion of the term, I was sent by 
marshoult (special warrant) to the town of Berdichev, 
in the province of Kiev. My mother soon joined me, 
and I thought to live quietly, continuing the work of 
my profession. I was, however, forbidden, by special 
order of the Minister of the Interior, to plead in the 
courts, or to teach children, or to open a shop, or to 
sell spirits, or to preach or lecture, or act on the stage. 
The last straw came after three months, in the summer 
of 1893, when I was only just beginning to regain my 
strength, in the shape of a midnight visit of a body of 
gendarmes, headed by the colonel and a procuror, with 
a warrant for my arrest if anything suspicious were 
found. I understood, indeed, that they would arrest 
me in any case if they did not believe me hopelessly ill. 
From their examination I learned that a student of the 
University of Kazan and another at Moscow had con- 
fessed to having attended secret meetings, at which I 
had spoken, four years before. At last, then, there was 
matter for a definite charge against me ! 



THE NEW GENERATION 273 

"Happily, some jealousy had arisen between the 
police of the two towns ; and, while they were awaiting 
instructions, I seized the opportunity of the respite, and 
made my escape over the Austrian frontier." 

I permit myself to add one more to the foregoing 
biographical outlines. 

Asked how he became a revolutionist, Mr. Mark 
Broido, the story of whose exile has been told in an 
earlier chapter, replied : "I go back to the time when, 
a boy of sixteen, I was studying in the gymnasium in 
a town of the province of Kovno. Two of our ten 
teachers were advanced Liberals — in every town you 
will find such men — and one of these used to invite the 
elder pupils to his home, and talk over social subjects 
with them, while the other lent us books that were not 
allowed in the college library. One day I came across 
a smuggled copy of Stepniak's ' Underground Kussia.' 
If that book moved you sober Englishmen, judge how 
it would affect us, surrounded still by the great evils 
and injustices which that brave spirit combated. I 
became a conscious revolutionist, though not yet a 
Socialist. The influence of the Kussian classics — Gogol, 
Turgeniev, Tolstoy — deepened and broadened my feel- 
ing of the need of greater liberty. I should say that 
Sir Thomas More's * Utopia ' was the first Socialist book 
I read — this in a German translation. A year later we 
formed a group of six or seven elder students to meet 
periodically for the discussion of social and political 
subjects. At that time the Labour Movement, as we 
now know it, was only beginning ; but we were deeply 
interested in it, and proved this by getting some of the 
labourers to come to us for such simple lessons and 
readings as we could give and they understand. There 
was in the town a certain doctor who had suffered two 
years' solitary confinement in the St. Petersburg fortress 

T 



274 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

for ' subversive tendencies,' and then been exiled hither ; 
and he was a centre of progressive thought in the 
narrow compass allowed to him. For my last classes I 
moved to the larger town of Libau, where there were 
more revolutionists and Socialists, with whom I became 
acquainted. Here I met a friend who, himself a work- 
ing man, poor and dependent on his own labour, had 
become a student, and with him and his fiancee, who 
had taken some part in the labour movement in Vilna, 
I was afterwards to be associated in an effort which cost 
us all our liberty. ' Trades Unionism is considerably 
developed in these Baltic provinces, and partly because 
of the influence of maritime industry, partly under the 
stimulus of Jewish and Polish national feeling, it there 
reaches its highest organization. 

" I now removed to St. Petersburg and entered the 
Technological Institute, but kept up frequent communi- 
cation with my friends in Vilna and Libau. The revo- 
lutionary party had not yet become nationally organized, 
but there were many town committees. In the main 
the movement was still an economic one ; but some of 
us thought the time had come to give it a political pro- 
gramme also. I decided, with this aim, to establish a 
new organization for the supply of pamphlets and other 
propagandist material, and resolved to found a secret 
printing-ofnce. What place should we choose ? In the 
large cities there is the danger of perpetual police 
vigilance ; in the small towns and villages that of the 
curiosity and suspicion of ignorant neighbours. We 
decided to try between these extremes, and ultimately 
took three rooms in Vilna, which we opened as a book- 
binder's shop under the name of one of the comrades 
employed. Our preparations took nine months, my 
wife and I collecting funds in St. Petersburg, mainly 
by means of students' entertainments, and our two 



THE NEW GENERATION 275 

friends at Vilna, with two labourers, one a bookbinder 
and one a compositor, gradually establishing themselves, 
with the necessary printing machinery, in the room 
behind the shop. Some wealthy men in Russian society 
are always ready to help such an enterprise, but it 
proved perilous help in our case. A certain G., a pro- 
gressive editor in the capital to whom I was introduced 
by P. Struve, contributed J£10 to my fund ; but I found 
out afterwards that he was practically a police spy in 
the camp of the 'intellectuals.' From some of the 
students' friendly societies I also received help, and 
several journalists promised me literary contributions. 

" But the most difficult and risky thing to organize 
was the circulation of our literature when it was printed. 
This had to be carried out by agents provided with 
money to send consignments to various parts of the 
Empire, even to Siberia. In Vilna we did not circulate 
our papers at all, at least until after they had appeared in 
other places ; thus we were amused one day by a report 
that our printing-office had been discovered — in a suburb 
of St. Petersburg. For a short time we worked hard, 
making connections among the growing and active 
Socialist Labour groups, and in the factories and work- 
shops of the capital. And then, early in 1901, we were 
discovered in reality. 

" The printery had only been open for six months, 
and had issued only some seven or eight thousand 
copies of half a dozen pamphlets. You may like to 
know the character of this literature which our Govern- 
ment so hates and fears. One pamphlet was a manifesto 
stating our aims ; a second was a translation of two 
speeches of Herr Liebknecht on the Russo-Chinese War ; 
a third a speech of Mr. Keir Harclie on the South 
African War ; another a narrative of the French Revo- 
lution of 1848; another a summary of the Russian 



276 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

Code, with a motto from Pushkin — ' In Russia you have 
no law ; you have only a pillar and on the top of it a 
crown.' The sixth was a new edition of Korolenko's 
novelette, ' A Wonderful Creature.' We were planning 
a newspaper, to have much the same programme as 
Iskra ( The Spark : the organ of the Russian Social 
Democratic party) which had not yet appeared ; and I 
had gathered a number of contributions, and arranged 
for correspondents in different places, when we were 
arrested. 

"A crowd of gendarmes and dvorniks (concierges) 
broke into my rooms in the dead of night, and, while I 
sat on my bed, set about a systematic search, cutting 
open the wall-paper, and raking about in the stove and 
up the chimney. It is characteristic of the mental 
condition of the typical gendarme officer that when they 
found five volumes in German, consisting of histories of 
the French Revolution of '48 and the Paris Commune, 
and some of Marx's works, with portraits, they had to 
ask me what they were, and left the books, quite 
satisfied with my explanation that they were a part of 
an illustrated history of the world. 

"However, they did not leave me. I was first 
taken to the Preliminary Detention prison, where I 
remained, without any hint of a charge being lodged, 
for three months. My first examination then took 
place, and I was told that I was arrested for taking 
part in a dangerous organization, and for gathering 
money and literary contributions. On the same night, 
it appeared, twelve persons only slightly acquainted 
with us, including a publisher whose wife had lent 
me books, had been arrested ; these were detained foi 
five months and then released. Four or five further 
examinations took place at intervals. Some of us wh( 
had established communications in the prison by 



THE NEW GENERATION 277 

knocking,* decided to protest against this punishment 
without trial by a hunger-strike, and we maintained 
our refusal of food and drink for five days. Some were 
released ; some, including myself, sent to Siberia, still 
untried, and our sentences still undelivered. It was not 
till the beginning of 1904, when I was already in the 
far distant sub-Arctic province of Yakutsk, that I was 
apprised of my punishment — eight years of exile to the 
remotest part of Siberia." 

As a postscript to his own story, Mr. Broido has 
furnished me with the following summary details of 
eleven men of his own exile party with whom he was 
most closely acquainted, and I print them here as 
evidence that I have not relied upon exceptional cases, 
as an indication also that the revolutionists of to-day 
are no less resolute than their predecessors. 

1. Moses Lurie, 32, compositor. He had been tried 
as a " political " seven times. Arrested for the first time 
in 1891, in Warsaw, for adherence to the Labour Party 
of Poland ; the second time in 1893, in Kharkov, for 
smuggling revolutionary literature over the frontier ; 
the third time, in Ekaterinoslav, for propaganda amongst 
the working-men ; the fourth, fifth, and sixth times, in 
1896, 1897, and 1898, in Kiev and Moscow respectively. 
The last time he was arrested in 1901, charged with 
adherence to the Socialist organization, " The Labour 
Standard " (Robochaya Z?iamia) i and with having been 
acquainted with Karpovitch, the assassin of the Minister 
of Education, Bogolyepov. Was for twenty-five months 
in solitary confinement in the fortress of St. Peter and 
St. Paul. Sentence for the last accusation — five years 
of exile in Kolymsk, in the far north-east of Yakutsk. 
He took part in two "hunger-strikes " and in the 

* I need not here repeat the explanation of the method of communications 
by a code of knocks which has been given by Kennan and Kropotkin. 



278 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

protest of prisoners in the prison of Alexandrovsk, near 
Irkutsk. While on his way to Kolymsk he stopped in 
the town of Yakutsk, and was the first to join the ranks 
of the protestants whose siege has been described. 

2. Victor Kurnatovsky, 35, a nobleman, military sur- 
geon, and engineer, graduate of the University of Zurich. 
Arrested for the first time in 1889, in Moscow, and sent 
for three years into exile in the province of Archangel ; 
the second time in 1897, at the frontier station of 
Verzbolo, for smuggling illegal pamphlets. Sentenced 
to three years' exile in Eastern Siberia, wherefrom he 
made his escape. In 1901 he was arrested for the third 
time, in Tiflis, charged with having delivered a revolu- 
tionary speech at a meeting of workmen ; twenty-nine 
months in prison and four years' exile in Eastern 
Siberia. He was living in a native village about 120 
miles from Yakutsk, when Broido became acquainted 
with him. 

3. Nicholas Kudrin, 29, engineer. Arrested for the 
first time in 1899, charged with having organized a secret 
printing-office in the Ural ; sentenced to five years' exile 
in Siberia, but escaped. The second time he was 
arrested in 1903, in Kamenez-Podolsk, for smuggling 
revolutionary pamphlets over the frontier — eight months 
in prison and a sentence of eight years' exile to 
Nijni- Kolymsk on the Arctic coast of North-East 
Siberia. 

4. Vladimir Perasitch, 36, a Servian, undergraduate 
of the Universities of Kharkov and Vienna. Arrested 
for the first time in 1889, in Kharkov, as a Socialist 
propagandist ; three years in prison. The second time, 
arrested in 1898, in Moscow, as a member of several 
socialist labour organizations ; sentence — two years of 
solitary confinement, five years' exile. The first time he 
was arrested under a false name — Solodutha, which he 



THE NEW GENERATION 279 

confessed to the officials after he had become involved 
in the affair of Yakutsk. 

5. Leo Tessler, 32, a chemist, graduate of the Uni- 
versity of Zurich, arrested in 1899, in Kiev, for adher- 
ence to the Socialist Party ; twenty-six months in St. 
Peter and St. Paul fortress, and then eight years' exile 
in Kolymsk. 

6. Paul Teplov, 36, a journalist, arrested in 1900, 
charged with editorship of a Socialist periodical, The 
Labourer's Cause, 

7. Olga Vicker, 28, a lady-teacher, arrested the 
first time in Byelostock, in 1898, as a member of the 
" Labour Standard ; " the second time in Odessa, in 1901. 
When her husband, a student at Kiev, was exiled for 
five years into Siberia, she followed him voluntarily. 
Together with all her comrades in the Yakutsk siege, 
she was sentenced to twelve years' hard labour, but 
made her escape on the way to the hard-labour prison, 
and is now in Switzerland. 

8. Vladimir Bodnyevsky, 29, artillery officer ; ar- 
rested, in 1903, for revolutionary propaganda amongst 
the troops ; sentence — ten years' Nijni-Kolymsk. He 
was one of the chiefs in the protest of Yakutsk, being a 
man of military experience (he took part in the Russian- 
Chinese war) and of great bravery. On the way to the 
hard-labour prison he made an attempt to escape, but in 
vain. Then he blew out his brains. 

9. Alexander Lsraelson, 39, graduate of the Academy 
of Art in Brussels, a painter. Arrested in 1902, in 
Moscow, charged with acquaintance with suspicious 
persons. Eight months in prison and three years in 
exile. 

10. Leo Nikiforov, 31, a literary man and veterinary 
surgeon. Arrested the first time in Moscow in 1899, 
the second time also in Moscow in 1901, for " free 



280 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

conversations " ; five months in prison and three years' 
exile in Siberia. His father, an old man, a well-known 
writer who had translated the works of Ruskin into 
Russian, was arrested some months ago. His brother, 
while in prison of Moscow, poured oil upon his bed, 
set light to it, and was burned to death. 

11. S. Komay, a member of the Social Democratic 
Labour organization, arrested in Vilna as compositor in 
a secret printing-office. After fourteen months' solitary 
confinement in the St. Petersburg fortress, and eight 
months in the Nicholas Mental Hospital, he was sent 
for eight years' exile to Kolymsk, where he poisoned 
himself. The photographic group, which I have repro- 
duced, was taken in Yakutsk before his departure for 
the exile's Furthest North. 



CHAPTER XIX 

THE RISE OF THE LABOUR MOVEMENT 

The sudden upheaval of the labouring classes in the 
Kussian capital last winter was a surprise and even a 
mystery to the average Englishman. He had supposed 
that almost the whole population of Russia was engaged 
in agriculture, that machine industry was only in its 
infancy, and, moreover, that the poor masses of the 
Tsar's Empire were so far sunk in ignorance and apathy, 
not to say drunkenness and other degradation, that an 
effective revolt was impossible. This misunderstanding 
was, in the main, due to the fact that our daily and 
weekly Press had given us hardly any enlightenment as 
to the deep and sweeping developments that had been 
in progress during the reign of Nicholas II. Manufac- 
tures and mining are still, it is true, of only secondary 
importance in Russia, but they have grown very rapidly, 
and, as we have seen, now give occupation to about two 
and a half millions of the population (three-quarters of 
a million of these being textile hands, and nearly as 
many miners and metal workers), which may be taken 
to be nearly ten per cent, of the adult male workers of 
the country. Moreover, the power of this new in- 
dustrial class is enormously increased by its concentra- 
tion in towns. In thirty years the town populations 
of the Empire have grown from eight and a half to 
seventeen or eighteen millions ; the inhabitants of St. 
Petersburg and Moscow have increased threefold ; those 

281 



282 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

of towns like Lodz, Ekaterinoslav, Baku, Warsaw, 
Odessa, and Rostov still more considerably. With the 
growth of numbers there has been a no less striking 
growth of intelligence, consciousness of the evil state of 
the country, and capacity for common action. 

The early stages of the movement are thus described 
in one of the volumes of foreign reports edited by Mr. 
Geoffrey Drage for the Royal Commission on Labour, 
and issued in 1894 : — * 

"The crisis of over-production which followed the war of 
1877-78 resulted in a reduction of wages which varied from 10 
to 20 per cent. In 1884 many employers, instead of reducing 
the number of their workmen, brought about an indirect reduc- 
tion of wages by means of decreasing the number of days 
worked in the week. This action, which caused a loss of one 
or two days' wages in the week and was contrary to the terms 
of labour contracts, roused great indignation in many factories, 
and the general dissatisfaction was increased by the prevalent 
abuses of fines and the obligation to deal at the factory stores, 
where prices were often as much as 45 per cent, above the 
ordinary retail prices. In consequence of these various abuses, 
a number of disturbances arose in 1884-85, especially in the 
governments of Vladimir and Moscow. To prevent the recur- 
rence of similar disorders the law of July 3rd, 1886, was pro- 
mulgated, which charged the factory inspectors with the duty 
of regulating the relations between employers and employed, 
and established severe penalties for strikes or other violation 
of the labour contract. By virtue of this law employers who 
infringe the stipulated agreement with their workmen are 
punished by a fine of 50 to 300 roubles. If they have caused 
a breach of the peace they are liable to imprisonment for not 
more than three months, and until June, 1893, the law provided 
that they might be prohibited from ever again carrying on any 

* C. 7063— XIV. of 1894. Prize 7£d. This blue book is still a most 
useful and comprehensive statement of Russian economic conditions, though 
many of the statistics are out of date, and the details of the historic passages 
are not always accurate. ' Consult also chapters on Industrial Legislation and 
Workers in Industry in " Russia at the End of the Nineteenth Century." 



RISE OF THE LABOUR MOVEMENT 283 

business. By the law of June, 1893, however, this prohibition 
was reduced to two years. On the other hand, workmen who 
refuse work before their labour contract has expired are liable 
to not more than one month's imprisonment. In the case of a 
strike or cessation of work with the object of obtaining an 
advance in wages or other improved conditions, the leaders of 
the movement are liable to from four to eight months', and their 
accomplices to from two to four months', imprisonment. Those 
who resume work at once when required to do so by the police 
are exempt from all penalties. If the men on strike force others 
to come out, prevent them from resuming work, or attack the 
property of the factory or any person employed there, the ring- 
leaders and their accomplices are sentenced to imprisonment 
for a term which varies respectively from four to eight and 
from eight to twelve months. Any workman who causes a 
disturbance can be ' administratively ' dismissed by the local 
authorities without a trial. If an employer finds it necessary 
to reduce the rate of wages or to dismiss a large number of his 
workmen, he sends private information beforehand to the 
Governor and the factory inspector, who endeavour to find 
employment for the discharged workmen. Before the institu- 
tion of the factory inspectors the police intervened between 
employers and employed, and it is stated that their decisions 
were almost always given in favour of the employers. At the 
present time whenever a strike occurs the factory inspector 
ascertains the difficulty, and generally succeeds in bringing the 
strike to a • close. Appeals against his decisions may be laid 
before the provincial committees on factory affairs, and finally 
before the Ministry of Finance. In most cases it appears to be 
the employers who dispute the inspectors' awards." 

The first great and really organized strike took 
place in 1885 at the Morosov factory at Orehovo-Zuevo, 
being led by two revolutionists, Volkov and Mosso- 
yenko. The men were driven to "riot" by the arrest 
of their representatives, some of whom, after being 
acquitted by juries, were re-arrested and exiled to Siberia 
by administrative order. This strike was, however, an 
isolated occurrence. A connection between the more 



284 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

intelligent workmen and the older revolutionary organi- 
zations had always been maintained, but the lapse of 
the latter toward the end of the eighties marked the 
recognition that a new need and a new opportunity had 
arisen. Had the foundation and expansion of modern 
industry in the empire been natural and healthy in 
character, had it depended on genuine organizing ability 
attracted by an open market amid social and political 
freedom, the new movement would have followed the 
lines of trades unionism in the West ; but, as we have 
seen, there was no public freedom, and the structure of 
industry and trade was artificial and unsound from top 
to bottom. M. Witte's policy of ultra-protectionism 
and paternal stimulation led straight, by way of over- 
speculation, to a crisis the effects of which were aggra- 
vated by the successive famines of the last decade and 
the campaign of reaction under M. Plehve. Unemploy- 
ment of the Western type was a new phenomenon in 
Russia. The dismissed workman suddenly found him- 
self in the same case with the outlawed student or 
" intellectual," the hunted Dissenter, the persecuted 
Jew ; especially when famine brought in a swarm of 
hungry competitors, he began to ask himself why, alone 
in Europe, the Russian peasant is always near starvation. 
Mr. Drage quotes from a Russian economist an inter- 
national comparison which may be thus summarized — 





Massachusetts. 


England. 


Moscow 


Wages (roubles per month) — 








Cotton-spinning and Weaving : 


53 


41 


13 


Machine Construction : 


66 


44 


23 


Average hours of labour : 


255 


234 


284 



According to an official writer,* the agricultural 
labourer in Russia hired by the year earns on the 
average 60 roubles (£6) per annum in the governments 

* " Russia at the End of the Nineteenth Century," p. 597, et seq. 



RISE OF THE LABOUR MOVEMENT 285 

of the " black earth " zone, and 64 roubles elsewhere, 
with board and lodging, the price rising as we move 
from the centre of the country westward, and falling in 
the East. Board is reckoned to cost 45 roubles per 
annum. A day labourer's hire varies from 40 to 60 
kopecks (say, lOd. to Is. 3d.). Miners' wages cover a 
wide range, with an average of from 150 to 200 roubles 
(£15 105. to £21) a year. In the mills of Moscow and 
Vladimir, the average monthly wages are stated to be : 
for adult men from 14 to 15 roubles (30s.) ; for adult 
women 10 roubles; for youths 6^ to 7^ roubles; and 
for children 4 to 5 roubles. At Lodz and Warsaw, 
however, these figures rise by 50 per cent. These 
figures will serve to show how far behind those of 
Western Europe are Russian industrial conditions. 
The labourer's position is, moreover, much worse than 
that of the workman in England before the abolition of 
the Corn Laws, the legalization of trade unions, and the 
extension of the franchise, in that he has no personal 
rights, no power of directing his social and political 
destinies. In minds so prepared, how powerful would 
be the appeal of the stories of the early revolutionary 
movement, misnamed "Nihilism," and of every new 
sacrifice for liberty ! 

In 1895 the " Union of Struggle for the Emanci- 
pation of the Working Classes" was organized in St. 
Petersburg by a group of Social Democrats recruited in 
part from the fragments of the old revolutionary bodies. 
Although it did not aim immediately at large member- 
ship, which would only have provoked a premature 
struggle with the authorities, it soon had an income 
of £2000 a year, thanks in part to middle-class support, 
and branches were formed in half a dozen chief pro- 
vincial towns. The great textile strike in St. Peters- 
burg in the summer of 1896, when 35,000 men and 



286 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

women from twenty-nine mills went out in support of 
their demand for better wages and shorter hours, gave the 
Union its first opportunity. The discipline and power 
of this effort were recognized not only by the punish- 
ments inflicted (1050 persons were arrested, of whom 
some were imprisoned and others rusticated), but also by 
a direct promise of legislation by the Government, a 
promise only carried out, however, after a second strike 
in January, 1897, in which 18,000 men from eight 
factories took part. The law of June 2 of that year 
reduced the normal working day to 11^ hours and night 
work to 10 hours, and forbade work on Sundays and 
seventeen public holidays. But, as the official reporter 
says, " these rules are not absolute. Labour may 
take place during a larger number of hours, and on 
Sundays and holidays, but then it is not obligatory." 
" The success of these and other strikes," says Mr. 
Volkhovsky, " and the development of the labour move- 
ment have been to a great extent due to the active 
part which the independent and daring portion of 
Russia's educated society — mostly young socialists — 
have taken in it. These people — undergraduates of 
both sexes, young lawyers, doctors, civil and technical 
engineers, journalists, even some factory inspectors, 
and other officials — did all that work for the working- 
men which the operatives were not accustomed to do. 
They formulated the working-men's demands on paper ; 
typed or printed them clandestinely, with much risk to 
themselves ; secretly published manifestoes on general 
questions of interest ; supplied the strikers with 
literature ; collected money for them ; sent abroad 
communications about the course of events ; and tried 
to consolidate and make permanent that organization 
which was originally only temporarily improvised for 
the necessities of individual strikes. Thus the Working- 



RISE OF THE LABOUR MOVEMENT 287 

Class Emancipation Leagues of St. Petersburg, Moscow, 
and Kiev were formed. Other places followed, and the 
movement spread all over Russia, strike after strike 
following in the most distant points of the Empire. In 
May, 1898, several groups of permanently organized 
working-men, together with Socialists belonging to 
other classes, federated, and thus formed the Social- 
Democratic Labour Party of the Russian Empire. This 
federation does not, however, include all the forces of 
the Russian labour movement. There are other groups, 
such as those that call themselves Revolutionary 
Socialists, and the one represented by the periodical — 
The Workers' Mind" 

The demand for labour literature had now grown to 
very considerable dimensions, and to supply this in- 
creasing demand has, in the intervening years, engaged 
a large part of the energies, not only of the Social 
Democratic Party (in which the Emancipation Union 
was absorbed in 1899), the Russian Socialist Revolu- 
tionary Party (of which I shall speak in a later chapter), 
the Jewish " Bund," or General Labour Union, and 
their provincial groups and committees, but also of the 
colonies of Russian political refugees in London, Paris, 
and Geneva. Every strike became an example and a 
lesson in propaganda and organization — an example 
and lesson soon spread throughout the great towns 
through the secret press. At the Paris Labour and 
Socialist Congress in September, 1900, Russia was 
represented by seventy-two delegates, who, though 
mostly refugees, held twenty-three mandates from 
organizations within the Empire. The report presented 
by one group gave particulars of 217 strikes, about a 
half of which had involved no less than 236,020 men. 
The most frequent demands were naturally for shorter 
hours and better wages, and in the greater number of 



288 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

cases some success was scored. Since the St. Petersburg 
strike of 1896, this group — the Social Democratic Union 
— had maintained a secret Labour Press, partly by 
clandestine printing, and partly by smuggling over the 
frontier, and had circulated thousands of fly-sheets and 
May Day manifestoes, and about thirty larger publica- 
tions, a modest enough record, but not unpromising as 
a commencement. Their report accounted for 5492 
persons arrested for taking part in strikes and Labour 
demonstrations in five years ; and this was thought to 
be more than a half of the real number. It was 
calculated that, reckoning only " preliminary detention " 
before any form of trial had taken place, these 5000 
victims had suffered a total of 700 years of imprisonment. 
About the same time, the committee of the " General 
Workers' Union of Russia and Poland" reported that, 
beside two periodicals which had been published steadily 
within the Empire, it had circulated 25,800 fly-sheets 
in Yiddish and 3300 in Polish, in eighteen months. 

While, in all this propaganda, specific labour con- 
ditions were naturally prominent, political liberty and 
civil rights, as against the arbitrary power of the 
Administration, were increasingly insisted upon. The 
Russian Social Democratic Party, born amid the dis- 
appointment of the collapse of the earlier revolutionary 
organizations, had at first deliberately limited itself to an 
industrial and economic programme ; and for years much 
of the strength of the leaders of the new labour move- 
ment was frittered away in bickering between sections 
of those who did, and those who did not, see the need 
of political action. The rift is not yet wholly covered, 
but the rapid march of events has either converted or 
pushed aside the doctrinaires ; and there is a strong 
tendency to common action, if not to actual union, of 
the revolutionary forces, and a general recognition that 



RISE OF THE LABOUR MOVEMENT 289 

some substantial measure of political freedom must be 
won before any radical economic reforms can be 
obtained. 

Face to face with this widespread and threatening 
development, the Government, beside plain repression, 
tried for a moment an expedient so puerile that the 
story of it would not be credited in this country were it 
not confirmed beyond all question. " Though I have 
long been interested in the working-men," said Father 
Gapon, the hero of the St. Petersburg strike, to an 
English correspondent in St. Petersburg, " I was dis- 
satisfied with their Socialist dark-chamber organizations. 
I first tried to organize a colony for the unemployed, 
and wrote a memorandum on the subject, which I sub- 
mitted to the Empress, receiving high praise for my 
ideas. But the matter advanced no further, and I 
received no permission. Then came Zubatov. I knew 
he and his agents were organizing the working-men 
merely to deceive them, to find out who were their 
leaders, and to imprison and exile them. Nevertheless 
I determined to follow his example " — in all but its aim 
and end, that is to say. 

The story of this Zubatov shows that the Russian 
Government can beat the wildest scribbler of Nihilist 
novels in the conception of impossible subterranean 
intrigue. After being a student at the Moscow Uni- 
versity, he became an official spy in the micl-'eighties, 
entered the service of the secret police, and in 
ten years rose to the head of its Moscow office, 
receiving a handsome salary and a sum of £6000 
a year for secret service money. When the Labour 
agitation began to assume large dimensions, and it 
became evident that neither the whips of the Cossacks 
nor imprisonment and exile would extinguish it, 
Zubatov, with the consent of his chiefs, the Grand Duke 

u 



2 9 o RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

Sergius, and the then prefect, General Trepov, invented 
a new policy, which, however, was but a police elabora- 
tion of the paternalism of M. Witte. This was simply 
the organization of trade unions on an official and 
" patriotic " basis, with due security of police control, 
the aim being to " dish the Radicals," and from the 
inside of the Labour movement to keep an eye on its 
" dangerous " leaders. In 1901 audiences ranging up 
to a thousand workmen were gathered in Moscow, at 
what was called the Zubatov " University." But the 
movement proper showed no signs of succumbing either 
to cajolery or to coercion. May Day, 1902, was celebrated 
in St. Petersburg by the killing of twenty demonstrators 
and the arrest of 800 others. In the labour troubles at 
Zlato-ust, in the Urals, there was a horrible battue, in 
which thirty men were killed and 250 wounded. Every 
trial advertised the demand for freedom, and the spirit 
of revolt waxed rapidly. In 1903, when Odessa and 
other southern towns were shaken by the agitation, 
Zubatov's agents went a step further, and actually 
undertook the leadership of the strike organization. 
This soon got out of hand, however ; the policy, now 
thoroughly discredited, was abandoned, and Zubatov 
himself dismissed. 

It appears to have been under pretence of following 
this silly example that Father Gapon persuaded the late 
M. Plehve to permit him to commence a " legal " Labour 
organization in St. Petersburg, in the spring of 1904. 
It was, perhaps, the most foolish thing, from his own 
point of view, that Plehve ever did. But how could 
the great police master suspect a simple priest of 
country stock of subversive tendencies ? Since Father 
Gapon became famous, some enterprising Italian has 
discovered in him the grandson of a Napoleonic officer, 
who stayed in Russia as a farmer after the retreat of 






RISE OF THE LABOUR MOVEMENT 291 

the French armies. However this may be, his father 
was a peasant in the province of Poltava, and it was 
only the boy's exceptional talent and force of character 
that procured him admission to the local Theological 
Seminary. After the death of his wife, he determined 
to continue his studies in the ecclesiastical academy of 
the capital ; and here, as an active worker in a society 
for the spread of Christian teaching among the industrial 
classes, and as an almoner of the House of Preliminary 
Detention, he came to know intimately the miserable 
life of the factory and workshop hands, and of the 
political and other prisoners. How his Workmen's 
Union developed, under the stimulus of popular 
discontent caused by the war and the suffering it 
entailed, we shall presently see. 

But it was only when Prince Sviatopolk-Mirsky 
succeeded De Plehve at the Ministry of the Interior, 
and gave Kussian society a strange and unexpected 
moment of freedom of speech and movement, that the 
next step could be taken. Not Gapon, but Sazonov, 
is the immediate cause of the great awakening. 



PART III 

THE AWAKENING 



CHAPTER XX 

THE END OF PLEHVE 

Russia, in the midsummer of 1904, showed no outward 
signs of an impending crisis ; and I left Moscow and 
Warsaw feeling that my friends had been imagining 
a vain thing. I was quickly undeceived, as many 
another globe-trotter has been on the same ground. 
On July 17, Bobrikov, Governor-General of Finland, 
was shot by Eugene Schaumann; on July 17, the 
Vice- Governor of Elisabethpol, Transcaucasia, was 
killed ; and on July 28, Vyatcheslav Plehve, Minister 
of the Interior, fell before the bomb of Egor SazonofF, 
appointed agent of the Organization of Combat of the 
Revolutionary Socialist Party. This time the orthodox 
land of mystery and horror should, indeed, have 
" staggered humanity ; " but, with almost indecent 
promptness and unanimity, the outer world declared 
that these things were just what might have been 
expected. It was a bad day's business for the Tsardom 
when the correspondent of a powerful daily paper was 
turned out of St. Petersburg. 

At home, the death of Plehve was seen to have a 
much graver significance, to mean, in fact, nothing less 
than the removal of the real Autocrat and the crippling 
of the Governmental machinery. For more than a 
quarter of a century he had stood at the storm-centre 
of Russian life, and had held up with unflinching 

295 



296 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

determination the standard of reaction. Where he got 
his coercionist ideals and the sang froid with which 
he carried them out no one could say, for his origin 
was obscure and mixed, in regard to both blood and 
intellectual equipment. Like his great rival, de Witte, 
he was a self-made man ; it is one of the odd features 
of the bureaucratic system that the man without a 
past, if he be able and unscrupulous enough, often goes 
further and faster in the Imperial service than any scion 
of the blue-blooded aristocracy. Plehve never turned 
back on his own record. From beginning to end, he 
was an enemy of liberty and progress in every form ; 
and he knew no scruples in combating tendencies which 
he believed to be subversive of the despotic power he 
managed gradually to concentrate in his own hands. 

The Nationalists of Poland first felt the weight 
of his more than Bismarckian hardness. While yet a 
young man, he became the leading agent in suppress- 
ing and punishing the revolutionary movement which 
culminated in the assassination of Alexander II. The 
father of the present Tsar gave him practically unlimited 
power ; all the great cities of the Empire were placed 
under martial law ; night searches, wholesale arrests on 
suspicion, exemplary penalties by secret courts, became 
the order of the day. The prisons were filled by 
" administrative order." Siberian exile became a by- 
word. To Plehve, the cold-blooded, the opinion of 
the outer world mattered not one whit. Let English 
Radicals, if it pleased them, waste their time in finding 
the exiles a platform. Let the democrats of New York 
assemble in mass meeting, and forward futile petitions 
to the Tsar! Plehve, all deference outwardly to the 
autocratic traditions, well knew that the Tsar, like his 
father, was a tool in the hands of the omnipotent tchin, 
and that he, Plehve, had a firm hold upon the handle of 



THE END OF PLEHVE 297 

that ancient and extraordinary machine. The subject 
nationalities, the subject religions, the leading spirits 
in the local governing bodies whose power he had 
already reduced to a harmless minimum, in turn felt 
the penalties, I will not say of independence, but of 
existence. 

Backed with the full strength of Mother Church, 
incarnate in that other sinister figure, Pobyedonostsev, 
the head of the Holy Synod, Plehve pursued his way 
with absolute fearlessness over the bodies of his victims. 
At last he was revealed not simply as an anti-Semite, but 
as a direct instigator of riots in which hundreds of Jews 
were killed and wounded, and thousands were made 
homeless. In the same spirit he had already directed 
the abrogation of the Constitution of Finland. In the 
same spirit he instigated the labour riots in Odessa and 
other southern towns. And as he had fearlessly stepped 
into the shoes of his murdered predecessor at the Home 
Office, M. Sipiagin, so the assassination of his servant 
Bobrikov left him determined to pursue to the end his 
relentless policy. 

If it was to a small body of outlaws that he owed his 
death, the number of the victims who rejoiced over the 
news was large, and by Western standards respectable 
enough. First among them were the Finns, for it 
was M. Plehve, who became Secretary of State for 
Finland after he had completed the suppression of the 
so-called Nihilist movement, they had to thank for the 
gradual abolition of the historic autonomy of their 
country. When a deputation bearing a petition against 
this arbitrary work, with half a million signatures, 
came to St. Petersburg, M. Plehve refused to see it, 
and ordered the delegates to return quickly. New 
deportations, the appointment of Prince Obolensky — 
Obolensky the Flogger, as he has been called, in 



298 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

memory of the way lie suppressed the agrarian disturb- 
ances in Kharkov three years ago — and the terms of 
the Imperial Manifesto on that occasion, proved that M. 
Plehve still ruled the Tsar and that the end of General 
Bobrikov had taught him nothing. Only a few days 
before his death, a Finnish writer, Mr. Konni Zilliacus, 
had addressed to the Minister an open letter, which 
was a plain warning : " Who sows wind, reaps the 
tempest. You have sown widely, a near future will see 
the harvest. With you lies the responsibility, with you 
the malediction of the people driven to despair. On 
your head be the blood that will be shed. It is you who 
have opened the eyes of us Finlanders to the necessity 
of the future revolution which will put an end to this 
shame for humanity that is called the Russian Tsardom. 
That is the only service your policy has rendered to 
progress, and it is so great that all of us who are 
struggling for liberty offer you our thanks." 

Plehve's activities had, in fact, an astonishingly wide 
range. He was only fifty-six years of age, yet — as Public 
Prosecutor, head of the police, Secretary of the Council 
of the Empire, and Minister of the Interior, successively 
— he made " order reign in Warsaw ; " dispersed the 
revolutionists of the late seventies and early eighties 
among the prisons of European and Asiatic Russia ; 
" Russified " the Baltic provinces ; spread terror and 
ruin among Jews and other heretics ; crippled the 
zemstvos ; provoked labour disturbances, in which 
many lives were lost, in Odessa, Baku, Kiev, and other 
towns ; flouted M. Witte and his allies, and entered into 
the fruit of their labours, such as it was ; put the 
universities under a humiliating military tutelage ; 
almost openly provoked the Jewish massacres in 
Kishiniev, and Homel ; suppressed the jacquerie in the 
provinces of Poltava and Kharkov ; and, finally, robbed 



THE END OF PLEHVE 299 

the Armenian Church of property of an estimated 
value of eleven millions sterling. Throughout this 
unparalleled career, he maintained his influence with 
the throne, and defied all opposition. The fate of 
Bogoliepov, Sipiagin, Bogdanovitch, Bobrikov, and 
the Vice-Governor of Elizabethpol, the attempts on his 
own life and on Pobyedonostsev, Obolensky, General 
Trepov, General Wahl, Baron Korv, Prince Galitzin, 
and a score of lesser officials, left him unafraid and 
relentless. The only hope he bequeathed to his country 
lay in the fact that there was no man of the same 
ability, will-power, and single-mindedness left to con- 
tinue his policy. 

His old enemy, M. Witte, remained in the field, 
though not in possession of it. But, so far as the 
rivalry went, it proved the superior power of the dead 
man, in the given circumstances. M. Witte, when all 
criticisms have been uttered, is a great administrator, 
with an ambition equal to that of Cecil Rhodes, and an 
executive capacity almost comparable with that of Lord 
Cromer. Mischievous as it has been in many ways to 
the body of the nation, his establishment of the spirit 
monopoly, his nationalization and extension of the rail- 
way system, his substitution of a gold for a paper 
currency, his development of the State banks, and his 
use of the Protectionist tariff to serve the purposes of 
landed proprietors and the great capitalists in the metal 
and mineral trades, were colossal designs, the fruit of 
which fell into the hands of M. de Plehve. Witte had 
some partial liberal proclivities ; and if his career proves 
anything, it proves the folly of imagining that even a 
small spice of liberalism can be reconciled with the service 
of the Tsar. The profits of M. de Witte's finance, the 
power which his enlargement of the Civil Service gave 
to the supreme Minister for the time being, were used 



300 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

consistently by M. de Plehve for the repression of free 
movement, free commerce, free thought and discussion 
in every form. The dead Minister gave abundant evi- 
dence during his life that he had full Imperial support 
for his least scrupulous and most cruel undertakings ; 
and the appointment of M. Buligin to his post, after a 
brief trial of Prince Sviatopolk-Mirsky, showed that, in 
the mind of Nicholas II. , his influence survived the 
shock of his death. 

This was, nevertheless, a serious blow to the credit 
of the immense army of gendarmerie and police of 
which he was the generalissimo. From the first it 
was known that the assassination was no accidental or 
independent event, but a deliberate act in the struggle, 
which had again reached an acute stage in course of 
the last three years, between the heads of the autocratic 
Government and the organized revolutionary parties. 
This was not the first attack on the late Home Secretary, 
but he learned how to protect himself in the crisis of 
twenty years ago, and had enjoyed a long immunity. 
A Russian friend explained to me that M. Plehve never 
moved about without a large bodyguard of police in 
private clothes. A friend of my friend was looking 
into the window of a photographer in St. Petersburg, 
where there was some special display, when he felt 
himself mysteriously pressed upon, his face scrutinized, 
his outer pockets felt, by several neighbours. Before 
he could speak, he had caught the explanation. M. 
Plehve was also an interested observer of the photo- 
graphs, and these pushful persons were his spies. I am 
told that he spent as much as £100,000 a year in 
securing the safety of his own person, but this is pro- 
bably an exaggeration. The facts shown in a recent 
report of his own on police expenditure are that, whereas 
up to 1896 £90,000 a year was found enough for secret 



THE END OF PLEHVE 301 

purposes, " the development of societies hostile to the 
Government, and the restlessness of the students, 
artisans, and peasantry," had since necessitated a rapid 
increase of these resources. In 1903 the return showed 
£143,000 spent at home, and £18,000 in secret police 
abroad ; but, in addition to this, the cost of the general 
police department and the gendarmerie rose to £46,000, 
and the whole account showed a deficit of £120,000. 
" In former years," said M. Plehve, " strict economy 
was observed in combating the revolutionary movement, 
as it was hoped that it would be possible to suppress 
the anti-Governmental movement without any consider- 
able monetary sacrifice. This economy, however, has 
enabled the revolutionary movement to organize an 
imposing force, which the Ministry now has to take into 
account." The end of the great policeman was not 
immediately due to any " imposing force ; " it simply 
proved the futility of coercion, whether the coerced be 
few or many. If they be few, the reply is assassination ; 
if many, insurrection. In this case the single blow 
against the single man who incarnated the spirit of 
repression was a signal for a great awakening of the 
popular forces throughout the Empire. 

Suddenly deprived of its right arm, the oligarchy was 
surprised into a liberal act. Prince Sviatopolk-Mirsky 
was appointed to the vacant post, and for a moment the 
lid was lifted from the seething cauldron of the national 
life. The Press enjoyed a new liberty, and used it to 
expand and enforce the chorus of hopeful protestation. 
When a number of exiled zemstvo leaders, writers, and 
lawyers were allowed to return, when the Free Economic 
Society was reopened, and some of the more vexatious 
Press restrictions were removed, it seemed as though a 
new era had already dawned. The excited expectation 
that had spread like a fever throughout the land could 



3 o2 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

now only be satisfied by substantial reforms. The 
historic meeting, or rather series of meetings, of dele- 
gates from the leading zemstvos held in St. Petersburg 
on November 19-22, 1904, was the most important 
representative gathering ever held in modern Russia, 
consisting of over a hundred substantial men, Con- 
servatives many of them, men of wealth and position, 
with not a single irresponsible element or characteristic. 
Never was universal discontent more respectably and 
soberly voiced. And this body of men, without whom 
the routine business of the country could hardly now 
be carried on, found at once that it was too late for 
measures of procrastination. They traced the manifold 
evils which every Russian experiences in every day of 
his public life to their seat in the arbitrariness of the 
Government ; and they demanded, not only freedom of 
speech, worship, press, and meeting, not only personal 
liberty, and the removal of all arbitrary police measures, 
but, as a means of permanently securing these rights, 
the establishment of an Imperial Douma, or Assembly, 
consisting of two Houses, the one of delegates of the 
zemstvos, and the other elected somewhat in the 
manner of the American Senate, with power of legisla- 
tion and control over administration and finance. 
Among the signatories of the resolutions in which these 
demands were formulated were members of many old 
aristocratic families, including Prince P. Dolgorukov, 
Prince Lvov, Count P. Heiden, Prince N. Volkonsky, 
Prince M. Galitzin, Prince Tchaikovsky, Baron K. 
Bondberg, Baron A. Stuart, and Prince S. Barataiev. 
Although not permitted to be openly printed, the 
resolutions were at once circulated and discussed 
throughout Russian society. In many great towns 
they were endorsed enthusiastically at meetings of 
legal, literary, educational, and other bodies. Many of 



THE END OF PLEHVE 303 

these associations, especially those of barristers, jour- 
nalists, economists, and literary men, made formal 
demands for the removal of existing disabilities. 

The oligarchy was now recovering from the blow of 
five months before, and Sviatopolk-Mirsky's term was 
nearing its close. On December 15 the Moscow Town 
Council adopted resolutions in favour of freedom of the 
Press and meeting, and popular control over the Govern- 
ment. Prince Galitzin, the City Captain, was formally 
reprimanded by the Governor- General for permitting 
this offensive manifestation. But the elders of the old 
capital, if not easily aroused, are not easily suppressed 
when they do rise. At the opening of the Moscow district 
zemstvo immediately afterward, Prince Troubetskoy took 
up the word of revolution, demanding, albeit in words of 
studied politeness, that the present deadly yoke should 
be removed from the shoulders of the people, not, if 
you please, by the constitution of committees of petty 
officials, but by the summoning of a popular legislative 
assembly, and the firm establishment of the personal 
rights which all other Western nations enjoy.* A few 

* In a letter to Prince Sviatopolk-Mirsky at the same time, Prince 
Troubetskoy, after having taken personal responsibility for the resolutions of 
the Moscow zemstvo, wrote as follows : — " Russia is at this moment traversing 
a period of anarchy and revolution. What is happening is not merely the 
manifestation of a youthful effervescence, but rather the logical outcome of 
the general situation in which society now finds itself. The present state of 
affairs is extremely dangerous for the whole nation, and particularly menacing 
for the sacred person of the Emperor. ... I had lately the pleasure of 
presenting myself to the Emperor and reporting to him, as well as I could, 
the present situation of the country. I tried to make him understand that 
what is happening is not a simple riot, but a revolution, and what are the 
reasons that are pressing the Russian people to a revolution for which it has 
no desire. His Majesty has power of preventing things from going so far. 
But for that there is Only one means : it is that the Emperor shall have 
confidence in the nation and in its representative bodies. From the bottom 
of my heart I am convinced that if the Emperor, animated by a perfect 
confidence, permitted these elements to associate themselves with him, 
Russia would be delivered from the menacing prospects of a bloody revolt, 



304 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

days later the zemstvo adjourned indefinitely after adopt- 
ing a resolution declaring that it was impossible to 
conduct the business of the assembly with the necessary 
quiet in view of the Government communique on the 
subject of its meetings. 

The turning-point was reached at a council held 
in the Palace of Tsarskoe Selo on December 15 and 
the following days, when a battle royal between the 
more liberal functionaries represented by Sviatopolk- 
Mirsky, Witte,and Yermolov, and the reactionaries led by 
Pobyedonostsev and Muraviev, resulted in the triumph 
of the latter. The two manifestoes of December 26 
and 27 were the immediate result of this situation. 
In his decree to the Senate, Nicholas II. protested his 
" untiring care for the needs of the country," his 
" undeviating heart's desire " for religious toleration 
(what were Tolstoy and the people of Kishiniev to 
think of that ?) ; and he formally promised " a series of 
great internal changes." But within a few hours his 
Ministers were warning the leaders of the provincial 
councils and municipal assemblies, which' are the only 
trace of representative government in the Empire, that 
they had gone beyond their rights in discussing these 
same " needs of the country," that if they did so again 
they would be punished, and that hopes of " a radical 
change " in the government of the country were " chi- 
merical." The duplicity of these two proclamations 
clearly showed the folly of hopes based on the supposed 
benevolence of the monarch, but they were also a 

and would give all its support to its Emperor, his autocracj 7 , and his will. 
In view of the state of mind of all those who are watching with alarm the 
prospect to which I have pointed, it is no longer in human power to forbid 
and prevent them from expressing what is weighing on their hearts. When 
the country is in danger it is not a time to be silent. Even if I am declared 
culpable for speaking thus as President of the Assembly of the zemstvo, my 
conscience is calm and pure." 



THE END OF PLEHVE 305 

witness to the growing strength of the Opposition. 
Certain very insufficient reforms were vaguely adum- 
brated ; the only means by which those and other 
reforms could be carried out were refused in language of 
insolent menace. Certain committees of petty officials 
were to be set to study how to ameliorate rural con- 
ditions. The great institutions charged with responsi- 
bility for those conditions were, at the same moment, 
warned that they must not meet together for their 
consideration, and that if they continued to state incon- 
venient facts aloud they would be visited with unnamed 
penalties. 

Who were the men thus threatened ? Were they 
hot-headed students, or labour agitators, or heretics, or 
desperate peasants ? Not at all ! They were the great 
Moderate party of the nobility in the country, and the 
business classes in the towns. The discontent of work- 
men and mujiks and nonconformists is a very old 
phenomenon, one of increasing seriousness, it is true, 
since the war produced its disastrous effects, but not 
yet, in and by itself, immediately dangerous to the 
throne and the governing class. The zemstvo move- 
ment, as we may call it, if not quite new, had assumed 
proportions strikingly in contrast with the isolated 
manifestations of former years, had indeed swept from 
one end of the country to the other like a sudden fire, 
and had made possible a revolution which no one would 
have anticipated a few short months before. To sup- 
pose that such a development could be met by Imperial 
lectures on the danger of "introducing discord" and 
creating "excitement" by raising "inadmissible 
demands" and "chimerical hopes," and similar conduct 
which " must be and will be stopped," was a very 
foolish blunder. Matters had gone too far for the consti- 
tutional agitation to be disposed of either by force or by 

x 



306 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

false pretences. It had now, for the first time, the 
leadership of a large and influential class of moderate 
reformers ; and the events of the next few weeks were 
to prove with terrible force that it had behind it the 
dumb rage of millions of desperate peasants, and the 
organized discontent of hundreds of thousands of town 
workmen. 



CHAPTER XXI 

" BLOODY SUNDAY " ; A BROKEN IDOL 

" It is hardly possible," wrote a Eussian correspondent, 
" to picture a gloomier New Year's Eve than the one 
which we are keeping here. Commerce and industry- 
are at a complete standstill. There is no work, and 
the number of unemployed is appalling. Workmen, 
having nothing to eat, are trying to steal food. The 
Stock Exchange is quite deserted. Every one is 
longing for the end of the war." Gloomy enough, 
indeed ! But worse times were to follow. The long- 
suppressed discontent was now to find startling ex- 
pression. A trifling incident precipitated the crisis. 
Upon the dismissal of a couple of men from the 
Putilov Ironworks in St. Petersburg on January 16, 
on the ground that they belonged to a Union, the 
workers at once struck, demanding an eight hours' 
day, a minimum wage, and a permanent committee 
of arbitration, as well as the recall of their fellow- 
workmen and the dismissal of an objectionable fore- 
man. Immediately their action was copied by the 
men of the Neva Shipbuilding Yards — a most serious 
matter in respect of certain submarines and gunboats 
which should have been ready within two months, and 
of urgently needed war material in preparation there — ■ 
and by others in the Admiralty Works, and a number 
of other factories and mills. Father Gapon, whose 

307 



3o8 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

Working-men's Association now numbered over 60,000 
members engaged in all the chief industries, and 
included eleven central organizations, suddenly became 
a public personage, the acknowledged leader of the 
strike. He interviewed the directors of the Putilov 
works, and also the Prefect of the Police ; and, claiming 
the confidence and adherence of the working-men, gave 
due notice to the authorities that the strike would spread 
unless concessions were promptly granted. Their answer 
was an absolute refusal ; and there was no disguise about 
the co-operation of the police and the employers. 

Day by day the strike spread ; more and more 
operatives left their work ; from every quarter came 
news of closed factories. The movement began to 
assume a more determined, organized, and political 
character. Meetings were held throughout the city, 
and it is reported by one who was present that he had 
not heard greater freedom of speech, even in America. 
The demands of the strikers were formally extended to 
include the minima of reform. That some of the largest 
works which were the first to close their doors were 
owned by the Government or engaged on Government 
contracts was no mere coincidence ; it was rather evi- 
dence that general, not alone industrial, disabilities and 
sufferings lay at the root of the movement, and that 
the rapid development of the strikers' demands in the 
former direction was of natural, not artificial, growth. 
The prohibition of the publication of any news of the 
strike without express permission of the police was 
irreconcilable with the benevolent promises of the two- 
weeks-old Imperial ukaz ; but it did not need this 
consideration to elicit in favour of the strikers the 
moral support of men in all sections of society. 

At this juncture occurred an incident to which, 
whether due to design or to accident — and the punishment 



"BLOODY SUNDAY": A BROKEN IDOL 309 

since meted out to the officers and men responsible 
leaves this still in doubt — an unfortunate influence 
upon the actions of the Tsar during the following days 
may be fairly attributed. At the annual ceremony of 
the blessing of the waters of the Neva, a bullet fired 
from the guns of the fortress on the opposite side of 
the river broke through a window in the Nicholas Hall 
of the Winter Palace, and several more fell near the 
pavilion below, where the Emperor and the Court were 
assembled. No great damage was done, and the inci- 
dent was not officially regarded as an attempt upon the 
life of the Tsar ; nevertheless, in spite of the explanation 
that a filled cartridge had accidentally been left in one 
of the guns which fired the salute, a dread of disaffec- 
tion in the army and of the consequent danger for his 
own life must have haunted the Tsar's mind. Meanwhile, 
the general discontent was increased by the refusal of 
the Ministers of Finance and the Interior to receive a 
deputation of working-men. No less than 174 factories 
were now closed in the capital, and nearly 100,000 men 
and women had left work ; bands of strikers paraded the 
streets daily, visiting factories and workshops which were 
still open and forcing the employes to join them. In some 
cases the masters themselves closed their works, fearing 
the consequences of such visits. But although the men 
occasionally came into conflict with the police who had 
been put in to guard Government works, the authorities 
— whether because they were taken by surprise, or 
because they hoped to retain public support, or under 
the deliberate intention of allowing the movement to 
ripen in order that its extinction should be the more 
complete — did not as yet interfere with the strikers. 
The streets were in darkness save where soldiers had 
been sent to guard the electric light works ; many shops 
were closed ; the official Police Journal and a meagre 



310 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

number of the Official Messenger were at last the 
only newspapers published. Nor was the capital alone 
affected ; risings and strikes now began to occur in 
Moscow, Kharkov, Riga, and other towns, while at 
Lodz a number of people were killed by the police, who 
fired upon a crowd of demonstrators. 

Such was the situation when Father Gapon con- 
ceived his fateful idea of a deputation en masse to the 
Emperor to present him in person with a petition * on 
behalf of the workmen and those dependent on them. 
The significant features of this lengthy document are 
the bold, if sentimental, expression of the spirit of 
revolt which now dominated the labouring population 
of the capital, and the practical demand for a single 
fundamental political reform, the summoning of a Con- 
stituent Assembly. " We are poor, persecuted, and 
burdened with labour beyond our strength," it began. 
" We are insulted and treated not as men, but as slaves, 
who ought to bear their cruel fate in silence. We are 
deprived of our rights, are uneducated and stifled by 
despotism and injustice. We have arrived at the ex- 
treme limits of our endurance." After reference to the 
demand for an eight hours' day and other industrial 
measures, to the imprisonment of innocent workers, and 
the responsibility of the bureaucracy for " a shameful 
war," the petition called upon the Tsar to throw down 
the wall which divided him from his people. " National 
representation is indispensable, for the people alone know 
their own real needs. Let all be equal and free in the 
right of election. Direct, therefore, that the elections 
for the Constituent Assembly be made by general secret 
ballot. That is our chief demand. Everything is con- 
tained therein." And after a recapitulation of the 

* For the full text of this and other documents here referred to, see Free 
Russia for February, 1905, and following months. 



"BLOODY SUNDAY ": A BROKEN IDOL 311 

industrial demands, the paper closed thus : " If you do 
not reply to our prayer we will die in this square before 
your palace. Should our lives serve as the holocaust of 
suffering Eussia we shall not regret this sacrifice, but 
will bear it willingly." 

The project was received with acclamation by Gapon's 
people ; and the police began to show signs of alarm. 
Gatherings and processions in the streets being for- 
bidden, Father Gapon addressed a further letter to the 
Tsar on January 21, announcing that " the whole people, 
trusting in you, has resolved to appear at the Winter 
Palace at 2 p.m. to-morrow in order to inform you of 
its needs," adding : "if, vacillating, you do not appear, 
you tear the moral bonds between you and the people. 
I and the representatives of labour and my brave com- 
rades guarantee the inviolability of your person." At 
the same time a letter signed by Gapon and eleven 
union representatives was sent to Prince Sviatopolk- 
Mirsky, apprising him that "the workers, many thou- 
sands of people, have peacefully, with faith in him, but 
irrevocably, resolved to proceed to the Winter Palace." 
Finally, the leader interviewed the Minister of Justice, 
who formally noted the demands of the strikers, with 
the ambiguous comment that every one must do his 
duty and act according to his conviction. That day, 
the Metropolitan Antonius pronounced an anathema 
against Father Gapon for inciting the people to rebellion 
at a time of national trouble. From morning till night 
on Saturday, January 21, meetings were held at which 
the petition to the Tsar was read and explained to the 
people, and many thousands of signatures were affixed. 
There being rumours that the Government would resist 
the progress of Sunday's procession to the Winter Palace, 
a deputation of distinguished men — including Maxim 
Gorky, the novelist ; Professor Kareyev, a scholar of 



312 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

European reputation; Professor Myakotin, of the Liberal 
Review ; Mr. Anensky ; Mr. Peshekonov, a well-known 
writer on economic subjects ; Mr. Arseniev, and Mr. 
Hessen, editor of the journal Pravo — went to call upon 
Prince Sviatopolk-Mirsky in order to endeavour to pre- 
vent bloodshed ; but the Minister declined to see them. 
They were received by the Assistant Minister, Rydzev- 
sky, who coldly informed them that the Government 
would not alter its arrangements. The delegation then 
called upon M. de Witte, who said that he was no 
longer in a position to help them. The eve of what 
was to be known as " Bloody Sunday " and the whole 
night were spent by the leaders of the movement in 
preparations for the morrow. Father Gapon, lest he 
should be arrested, remained absent from the poor 
lodging which was his home. " Me," he said, " they 
shall not arrest, because effective measures have been 
taken against any such surprise. I have my body- 
guard of workmen, and I shall not sleep at home any 
more." 

On the 22nd of January, the clear frosty morning 
dawned upon the " Little Father " of all the Russias 
fifteen miles away from St. Petersburg, hidden in his 
palace at Tsarskoe Selo. But, in the capital, all thoughts 
were of his presence at the Winter Palace, where his 
children had craved that he would meet them. The 
bridges connecting the industrial quarters with the centre 
of the city were early occupied by troops, and the avenues 
which led to them were shut off. Small camps of grey- 
coated soldiers and even of sailors were stationed short 
distances apart throughout the snow-covered streets, 
with bonfires, stacks of rifles, and ambulance vans in 
readiness. By midday the church bells called in vain ; 
roofs and windows were crowded with spectators ; slowly 
but steadily, the populace was moving on from all 



"BLOODY SUNDAY": A BROKEN IDOL 313 

sides towards the Palace Square. But already trouble 
had begun : the crowds who were trying to pass from 
Basil Island across the bridges to the meeting-place on 
the other side of the Neva came into collision with the 
soldiers. The Cossacks attacked them with their whips 
and the Uhlans charged to drive them back. Still they 
pressed on. " We are peaceful men," they said. " Let 
us pass. We have only come to seek for help." The 
answer was a volley from the guns ; and in that moment 
many a brave fellow had uttered his last word. 

Past the Narva Gate came a long bare-headed pro- 
cession led by Father Gapon and another priest, in 
full vestments, bearing the cross. Some of the strikers 
carried banners, ikons, and portraits of the Tsar, Tsaritza, 
and the Dowager-Empress. No fear, no thought, of 
opposition or danger troubled the workmen as they 
moved along, for they knew that a notice calling upon 
the men to march quietly to meet the Tsar had been 
read by the police and allowed to remain posted on the 
factory walls, side by side with an address of thanks 
which had been presented to the Emperor six months 
before ; moreover, a police-officer, in consultation with 
the chairman of the Working-men's Club, had said that 
the conduct of the procession would be best left to the 
men themselves. As they passed, the soldiers, bowing 
and uncovering their heads, made the sign of the cross. 
Suddenly, a squadron of cavalry intercepted the pro- 
cession ; and, with no warning, the infantry from the 
opposite bank of the canal fired upon the crowd, first, 
a volley of blank cartridges, and then with ball. On 
all sides men fell wounded and dead ; the ikons and 
banners w T ere riddled with shot ; the snow was stained 
with blood. The holy portrait of the Tsar was shattered 
and torn to shreds, while Father Gapon rose from beneath 
it, slightly injured, and disappeared, not to be seen 



314 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

again till he can stand at the head of a more effective 
army of protestants. 

On all sides the dead and dying were carried away 
or cast carelessly aside. At the Putilov Works the 
men, fearing that they would be fired upon, flung 
themselves upon the ground, and so the soldiers shot 
them down ; the awful scene was described as a " human 
shambles." Outside the Palace the troops fired directly 
into the crowd. Men, women, and children fell at 
each volley. The soldiers had become uncontrollable 
and were firing with reckless aim, so that even little 
children playing upon the ice were struck. Several 
officers were attacked and injured by the crowd ; but 
it was unarmed, and had no means of resisting the 
terrible onslaught. In the Vassili Ostrov district and 
on the Nevsky Prospect the strikers tried to erect 
barricades with the telegraph-wires and poles and 
stones which they tore up from the roadway, but the 
soldiers fired upon them mercilessly and cleared them 
away. As the day wore to a close, the city was again 
plunged in darkness. Firing was heard all through the 
evening, and throughout the night there was a great 
funeral, the police secretly carrying away and burying 
the dead. The number of these will never be known, 
but a conservative writer, anxious to prove that " com- 
plete tranquillity" had been restored, estimated that 
five hundred persons were killed and fifteen hundred 
wounded. In the evening the following proclamation 
was issued : — 

" Comrades, Russian Working Men. — There is no 
Tsar. Between him and the Russian nation torrents 
of blood have flowed to-day. It is high time for the 
Russian workman to begin without him to carry on the 
struggle for national freedom. You have my blessing 



" BLOODY SUNDAY": A BROKEN IDOL 315 

for that fight. To-morrow I will be among you. 
To-day I am busy working for the cause. 

"(Signed) George Gapon, Priest." 

Comment upon these events is needless. If 
Nicholas II. preferred to stay at Tsarskoe Selo, rather 
than meet a test which a courageous monarch would 
have welcomed, we can only reflect that this was quite 
in accordance with the spirit of his reign. But the 
Tsar being absent, why should the workmen have been 
prevented from going to the Winter Palace Square to 
discover the fact ? There were troops enough to protect 
the State buildings, and, at least, the onus of the first 
violence would then have rested with the strikers, 
had any disturbances occurred. Instead, cavalry and 
infantry occupied every approach to the centre of the 
city, and, without any unnecessary formalities, pro- 
ceeded to carry out what looked like a carefully pre- 
arranged programme of massacre of unarmed men, 
women, and children. As though Russia had not a 
sufficiently redoubtable enemy to face in the Far East, 
her rulers must needs turn their weapons upon the 
people of her metropolis. The future keeps her secrets, 
but we may be sure that in one way or another there 
will be a price to pay for every one of these wasted 
lives. 

Having suitably disposed of the petitioning work- 
men, the oligarchy proceeded to clap into jail the 
" intellectuals " who had endeavoured peacefully and 
legally to mediate for them. During the night of 
January 23-4, Mr. Hessen, who introduced the deputation 
of the previous Saturday to M. Witte, was arrested and 
thrown into the St. Petersburg fortress, whither he was 
followed by Professor Karayev, Mr. Peshekonov, Pro- 
fessor Myakotin; Mr.Semevsky, the historian; Mr.Kedrin, 



316 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

a member of the City Council — all these members of 
the deputation which had waited on Prince Sviato- 
polk-Mirsky and M. Witte, in the hope of prevent- 
ing bloodshed — Mr. Ivanchin Pissarev, an author, and 
Mr. Sifitnikov, a member of the St. Petersburg Judicial 
Committee. " Not one of these men," wrote Dr. Dillon, 
" would have anything to do with secret committees or 
subterranean agitation, and it was they who, in my 
presence, refused to listen to a suggestion that a per- 
manent committee be formed to direct the revolutionary 
movement." Dr. Dillon was himself arrested, but was 
liberated in half an hour. The immunity of the foreign 
correspondents was one of the singular features of the 
crisis. On January 24, General Trepov was installed 
as Prefect of the city, and on the same day Maxim 
Gorky, who had taken a prominent part in the agitation 
for peace and representative government and in the 
deputation of the 21st, was arrested in Riga and brought 
to St. Petersburg, where he lay in the fortress — in con- 
ditions which have been described in earlier chapters 
— till February 27, being then released on bail and 
deported to Riga. 

Of the no less terrible occurrences in the provinces 
during the succeeding months it is too soon to speak 
with accuracy or certainty of true perspective. The 
strikes in Moscow, which immediately followed that in 
the capital, showed no very considerable strength or 
staying power, but it was otherwise in some of the 
Southern and Baltic' coast towns, and above all in Poland. 
Warsaw, Lodz, and other Polish towns were for several 
weeks in a condition of open anarchy, during which 
street fighting was of daily occurrence, and scenes of 
bloodshed unparalleled in modern European history were 
enacted. No sooner did this movement show signs of 
temporary subsidence than the attention of the world 



"BLOODY SUNDAY": A BROKEN IDOL 317 

was drawn to sanguinary outbreaks in the Caucasus and 
the Caspian oil region ; and these, again, were eclipsed 
by the news of alarming depredations of peasants in 
Saratov, Minsk, Pskov, Tchernigov, Orel, Kursk, and 
several districts of Poland and the Caucasus — perhaps 
the most threatening development of all. In all 
these episodes there were signs of an increasing political 
spirit, a growing organization, and, not infrequently, 
a paralyzing effect upon the local administration. 

Chaos in the Government offices hardly less com- 
plete than the chaos in the chief industrial centres of 
the country was only thinly concealed by the sterile 
proceedings of rival " reform" commissions, and repeated 
canards about the coming concession of a " Magna 
Charta " through the heroic efforts of M. Witte and 
M. Yermolov. Scepticism as to all such reports was 
justified by the terms in which the Tsar addressed two 
deputations of well-trained workmen at the beginning 
of February, and by the appointment of M. Buligin as 
Minister of the Interior at the same time ; and it was 
afterwards confirmed by the dissolution of the Com- 
mission to which the drafting of industrial " reforms " 
had been entrusted, and the obstinate continuance of 
the Manchiirian campaign in the teeth of petitions and 
protests from every unofficial section of the nation. 
The official Moderates have, then, proved themselves 
powerless against the infatuated reactionaries who 
control the Court and the Governmental machine. 
This is not surprising. Earnestness counts for much 
in such a contest. M. Witte has hitherto always 
discouraged the demand for political reform, claiming 
that all will be well if he can only be allowed to pursue 
his financial and other economic plans — plans that in 
the past have inflicted upon the Empire some of its 
heaviest burdens. To an ambition like his no essay is 



318 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

impossible, but it would have been in the last degree 
surprising if he had now been found fathering a really 
far-reaching scheme of political reform. The Opposition 
cannot but regard anything he does with just suspicion, 
and the only certain thing is that, if a Zemsky Sobor 
be summoned, and be not of a really representative 
character, with full power of legislation and control 
over the national finances, it will serve no other purpose 
than to advertise and stimulate the revolutionary parties 
in their more extensive demands. 



CHAPTER XXII 

TERRORISTS AND REFORMERS 

I have said that, apart from the separate national 
movements represented by the Polish Proletarian Party, 
the Polish National League, the Revolutionary Party 
of Little Russia, the Georgian Revolutionary Federalist 
Party, the Armenian Revolutionary Federation, and the 
Finnish Party of Active Resistance, the more extreme 
Opposition in the Empire consists of three considerable 
organizations — the Social Democratic Party, the Jewish 
Bund, and the Revolutionary Socialist Party. Of these 
the work of the first two is almost exclusively concerned 
with the growth of the labour movement, some account 
of which has been given. It remains to speak of the 
Revolutionary Socialists, who have a wider and in some 
respects more characteristically Russian programme 
and method. 

This party was founded at two secret Congresses — 
the first held in a town of South Russia in August, 
1898, and the second at the end of 1900. It may be 
said to be a new combination, in accordance with the 
new circumstances, of the two elements, the combative 
and the agrarian, which were separated when the old 
Land and Liberty Society split up, thirty years ago, 
into the sections of the " People's Will " and the " Black 
Division" (or " the Land for the People "). The Social 
Democrats, from 1895 to the end of the century, were 

3i 



320 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

in the main Marxian doctrinaires, whose practical work 
was limited to the organization of strikes, who decried 
political action, opposed " terrorism," and disbelieved 
altogether in the peasantry. To many groups scattered 
up and down the country, some of them being remnants 
of the old revolutionary parties, this narrow programme 
appeared to omit the greater part of the national 
problem ; and it was these groups, aided by advice and 
literature from the elder refugees in Paris, London, 
and Geneva, that united to form the Revolutionary 
Socialist Party, which, while it works actively among 
the industrial classes of the great towns, also carries on, 
through a network of branches, an energetic propaganda 
in the villages. 

If anything was to come of the revolutionary move- 
ment in the near future, this was an absolutely necessary 
undertaking, however much thankless labour and punish- 
ment it might involve. The peasantry are still the main 
body of the nation, and it is direct from their ranks 
that the army and the factory population are mainly 
recruited. To Marxian Socialism the Russian agrarian 
problem was terra incognita. But that problem involves 
the existence of the great mass of the Russian people. 
Some slight ameliorations of the lot of the factory 
workers have been secured. The mujik has got nothing 
since the Emancipation except a single ukaz loosening 
the collective obligation for the payment of taxes. His 
burden is often as heavy as the serfs was, in spite of 
revisions of direct taxation and reduction of the redemp- 
tion dues. He is consequently unable to improve his 
methods of farming ; the soil is becoming exhausted ; 
the cutting down of forests has worked widespread 
mischief ; and the natural consequences of the starva- 
tion of the schools and the zemstvos are bad crops and 
famine. It is easy in the se circumstances to aattck the 



TERRORISTS AND REFORMERS 321 

Mir and the system of communal landholding. But if 
the peasant is to a great extent tied to the soil by the 
double chain of undivided property and collective taxa- 
tion, if excessive subdivision of land means subdivision 
of capital, stock, and tools, and all the other weaknesses 
of petty culture, the Mir yet gives a direct spur to 
personal effort ; it provides the only available refuge, 
by mutual aid and care, of the old and otherwise help- 
less ; and where the soil is not frequently reallotted 
the advantages of ownership are united with local 
government and joint responsibility. That common 
property in land has not crumbled away, and is not 
doing so, shows that the system has deep roots in native 
instinct and habit. 

In pressing to a logical conclusion the principle of 
collective land ownership, the Revolutionary Socialist 
Party is, therefore, basing itself upon a major charac- 
teristic of Russian life and history. And it claims to 
find much encouragement in the present outlook for its 
propaganda. " Elementary instruction has penetrated 
among the peasants," says the Central Committee of 
the Party in a recent report, " and this, added to the 
experience which forty years of freedom has brought 
them, has changed country life enormously, and has 
made it much more possible for the dwellers in the 
country to assimilate revolutionary ideas. Twenty 
years ago it was useless to distribute pamphlets among 
a crowd, for there was no one who could read them. 
To-day, books find readers in the most out-of-the-way 
villages. Formerly it was not at all a rare occurrence 
to find a mujik who had never seen the town of the 
district in which he lived ; now a great mass of the 
Russian peasantry leads a nomad life. Not less than 
ten million adult peasants roam about the country 
every year, taking on different kinds of work, meeting 

Y 



322 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

numbers of people in different walks in life, observing a 
variety of phenomena, and being constantly struck by 
the contrast between the luxury of some and the misery 
of others, between the miracles worked every day by 
science, and the darkness of their own intellects. This 
wave of human misery, which every year throws mil- 
lions of peasant workers over the surface of Russian 
soil, tossing them from one exploiter to the other, helps 
to open the eyes of the workers, and shows them the 
pyramid of which they form the base, and against the 
angles of which they are always striking. And all this 
torrent of impressions, of feelings, and of new know- 
ledge, is constantly surging into the villages with those 
who are returning to the home of their birth, and 
forcibly, if slowly, enlarges the horizon of the mujik 
who has never yet left his field. At the same time the 
consciousness of their rights is growing in the minds of 
the peasants. The great hopes which the mujik used 
to place in his little father the Tsar have evaporated, 
thanks to the long and vain waiting they have cost him, 
and thanks also to the policy of Alexander III., who 
only attempted to protect the gentlemen proprietors. 
Revolutionary propaganda during these latter years has 
also helped the cause. In our oral propaganda, as also 
in our pamphlets and proclamations, we never miss 
calling attention to the necessity of the suppression of 
absolutism on one side and of the initiation of a 
whole series of economic and political reforms on the 
other. During 1903 and 1904 our propaganda gained 
ground daily, and its workers penetrated not only into 
the north and south, but also into the central provinces, 
which used to be the rampart of the Tsardom. We are 
positive that only the lack of effective forces — a large 
percentage of which fall victims of Governmental perse- 
cutions, for they are sent into prison and exile before 



TERRORISTS AND REFORMERS 323 

they have time to become experienced workers — and 
also the impossibility of starting and of maintaining 
everywhere our organizations, prevents us from grouping 
around us the masses of Russian peasantry. The sym- 
pathy they display for our ideas is so great, the confi- 
dence they place in the propagandists of these ideas is 
so manifest, that they constantly invite these latter to 
come among them, and themselves organize meetings so 
as to be able to talk and exchange ideas. During the 
four years of our work among the peasantry we have 
not once met with an intentional betrayal, nor a refusal 
to accept our literature with the view of distributing it 
amongst others." 

At the same time, the Committees and groups of the 
Party in the large towns agitate for political emancipa- 
tion by the establishment of a Constitution, as the 
necessary first stage toward a democratic State. In the 
last two years they have circulated an enormous quantity 
of secretly printed proclamations and other brochures, 
in addition to forty-six numbers of their official organ 
and eight volumes of other publications. From time to 
time their secret presses are discovered. There is a 
police raid ; two or three men and women are swallowed 
up, but the work goes on steadily, notwithstanding the 
sacrifice of life and money. There has also been an 
enormous increase in the last year in the quantities of 
clandestine literature printed abroad and smuggled into 
the empire. 

To the outer world the Party has become known 
by the smaller but more sensational part of its work, 
the arrangement of " reprisals " in reply to the grosser 
acts of administrative oppression and cruelty. I have 
said that a revival of terrorism has marked the 
acute stage of the anti-Governmental struggle in the 
last five years. A complete list of these acts of 



324 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

vengeance would be lengthy; the more important are 
as follows : — 



Killed 

M. Bogolyepov, Minister of Education, by Karpovich, 
after the University troubles, February 27, 1901. 

M. Sipyagin, Minister of the Interior, by Stephen V. 
Balmashev, son of an old political exile, April 15, 1902. 

The Chief of Police at Vladikavkaz, in the Caucasus, 
September, 1902. 

General Bogdanovitch, Governor of Ufa, after the 
massacre of strikers at Zlato-ust, May 19, 1903. 

General Bobrikov, Governor-General of Finland, by 
Eugen Schaumann, June 17, 1904. 

The Vice-Governor of Elizabetpol, Transcaucasia, 
July 17, 1904. 

M. Plehve, Minister of the Interior, in St. Petersburg, 
by Egor Sazonov, assisted by Schimel Sigorsky, July 28, 
1904. 

Colonel Bykov, at Olty, province of Ears, after a 
massacre of Armenians by Cossacks, by an agent of 
the Armenian Revolutionary Committee, September 13, 
1904. 

Chief of Police at Shusha, in the Caucasus, December 
28, 1904. 

M. Tcherbatov, Inspector of Customs, at the same 
place, January 2, 1905. 

Prince Andronnikov, a cavalry officer, who had 
given orders to fire on the people in Warsaw, February 

5, 1905. 

Herr Johnsson, Procurator of the Finnish Senate, at 
Helsingfors, on February 6, 1905. 

Grand Duke Sergius, in Moscow, February 17, 1905. 



TERRORISTS AND REFORMERS 325 



Attempts 

M. Pobyedonostsev, Procurator of the Holy Synod, 
by N. Lagovsky, April, 1902. 

Trepov, Chief of the Moscow Police, by a woman 
teacher named Allard, April, 1902. 

General Vahl, Governor of Yilna, after the flogging 
of political prisoners, by Hirsch Leckert, May 18, 1902. 

Prince Obolensky, Governor of Kharkov, after the 
flogging of peasants, by Th. Kachour, August 11, 1902. 

M. Bessonov, Chief of Police at Kharkov, at the 
same time. 

Prince Galitzin, Governor- General of the Caucasus, 
at Tiflis, after the repression of the Armenians and the 
confiscation of their Church funds, October 27, 1903. 

M. Metlenko, Chief of Police at Grodno, November 
12, 1903. 

Baron Korv, Governor of Lumsha, January, 1904. 

M. Maschevsky, Chief of Police at Ekaterinoslav, by 
a noble named Ivanitzky, January 5, 1905. 

General Trepov, Chief of Police at Moscow (on the 
eve of his removal to St. Petersburg), January 15, 1905. 

Baron Nolken, Chief of Police at Warsaw, March 26, 
1905. 

Several of the more important of these terrorist acts, 
including the assassination of M. Sipyagin, General 
Bogdanovitch, M. Plehve, and the Grand Duke Sergius, 
were admittedly carried out by emissaries of the 
" Boyevaya Organisatzia " (" Organization of Combat") 
of the Revolutionary Socialist Party. This body is 
necessarily small in numbers, for the danger of a 
large combatant body was found to its peril in the 
old days of the " Executive Committee ; " and it 
is completely isolated and self-directing. To the 



326 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

argument of the Social Democrats that terrorist action 
tends to isolate those who trust to it and to prevent 
the political organization and education of the masses, 
it replies that in face of such a policy as that of Plehve 
theoretic considerations and abstract arguments are 
vain ; that to a Governmental terror there is no 
possible reply but an anti-Governmental terror ; that 
such reprisals arrest attention where arguments arrest 
none, and give heart and hope where there is like to 
be only a barren despair. But the organization sees 
the deplorable character of isolated action by indi- 
viduals thinking only of a personal vengeance ; and 
it aims, therefore, to give the struggle the character 
of a regular civil warfare. Thus ML Plehve is attacked, 
not the Tsar, because M. Plehve was the more powerful 
and therefore the more guilty person. That it has no 
liking for murder in itself it proves by re- issuing the 
proclamation of the old Executive Committee condemn- 
ing the murder of President Garfield, and declaring 
that "in a country where individual liberty makes an 
honest strife of ideas possible, where the free will of the 
people is engaged not only in the elaboration of laws 
but in the nomination of statesmen, a political assassina- 
tion is the manifestation of the same spirit of despotism 
whose abolition in Eussia is our immediate object." 

" I wish to explain," wrote Sazonov, in a speech 
which he was not allowed to deliver at his trial, but 
which has since been published by his colleagues,* 
" that our party cannot be described as one which 
acts by 'violence.' It is by its very nature inimical 
to every kind of violence. . . . "We are not forcing 
our ideals upon the people, we wish only to speak 
the truth. . . . We hate and despise violence ; we 
are convinced that violence is powerless against ideals. 
* La Tribune Russe, Nos. 26, 27, 28, 1905. 



TERRORISTS AND REFORMERS 327 

But all our attempts at peaceful activity have been 
met by ruthless persecution on the side of the 
Government. . . . We are subjected to the humili- 
ation of corporal punishment, beaten by knouts, 
trodden upon by horses, and shot down as soon as 
we resolve to declare publicly in the streets that 
which we desire and request. We are deprived of 
the protection of law, and declared to be the enemies 
of the people, and political criminals." After enume- 
rating the many crimes committed by von Plehve, for 
which he (Sazonov) " executed " him, he gives an 
autobiographical sketch, in order to show how, by the 
force of circumstances, he at last felt impelled to take 
upon himself the duty of avenging the people : " I had 
no personal motives for killing the Minister. By birth 
I am of a peaceful, religious, and monarchical peasant 
family. The rooms in the house of my father were 
ornamented with portraits of the Tsar side by side 
with holy ikons. Later on, in the gymnasium the 
educational spirit was of the same nature. When I 
entered the Moscow University I did not think or 
know of any revolution." The first shock to the 
student's political indifference was administered to 
him by the Governmental Order in 1901, punishing 
refractory students by enforced military service, con- 
trary to existing laws. He felt obliged to take part in 
the students' protest against this Order, and then he 
noticed, for the first time, that the police and their 
spies were the masters of the University. He was put 
in prison with many other students, and it was there 
that he became acquainted with revolutionary prints. 
Then came the excommunication of Tolstoy, whom 
Sazonov greatly admired as a writer, and the news 
of the terrible ill-treatment of the students of St. 
Petersburg by the police. Thus he understood that 



328 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

no freedom of speech or of conscience existed in 
Russia, and his thoughts began to turn to revolution. 
For participation in the students' protest, Sazonov was 
exiled to his native place, but a few weeks later he was 
again arrested because he was found to be in the pos- 
session of socialist literature. Having passed some time 
in prison for the second time, he was liberated, and then 
again arrested for participation in a peaceful socialist 
organization. He was, for the third time, imprisoned, 
kept in prison for eighteen months, and afterwards 
exiled to the furthest part of Siberia for a period 
of five years. While in prison he was subjected to 
the most cruel treatment. During his incarceration 
hundreds of political prisoners passed through the 
prison on their way to exile, and many of them told 
him terrible tales of the misdeeds of von Plehve : the 
shooting of workmen, the flogging of peasants, the 
violation of women, the massacre of the Jews, and 
the extermination of educated youths. "Yes, the 
Government made of me, from a peaceful man, a 
revolutionist and terrorist. When I escaped from 
Siberia I felt that red ghosts were creeping behind 
me, never leaving me by night or day, and con- 
tinually whispering to me — ' Go and kill Plehve ! ' 
Since I began to understand the work of the Ministers 
in Russia, I felt I had no right to enjoy a peaceful 
and happy life. In killing Plehve I acted only accord- 
ing to the dictates of my conscience ! " Sazonov 
concludes by the expression of deep regret for the 
death of the coachman of Plehve and for the serious 
injury done to another man by the explosion of the 
bomb. 

I leave these words to speak for their author and 
those engaged in the same desperate cause. Two things 
may be remarked in the recent terrorist episodes— the 



TERRORISTS AND REFORMERS 329 

general sympathy of Russian society with the con- 
spirators, and the failure of the police either to protect 
its masters or to destroy the revolutionary organization. 
Only once has a capture of any substantial importance 
been made, outside the agents immediately engaged. 
This exception was represented at the trial by court- 
martial in St. Petersburg on March 2, 1904, and follow- 
ing days, of Dr. Gershouni, a striking personality, and 
probably at the time the leading spirit of the " Organi- 
sation of Combat," and four others — M. Melinkov, a 
former student of the Mining Institute ; Aaron Veytsen- 
feld, a Jewish workman ; Ludmilla Remyannikov, a 
merchant's daughter and medical student ; and E. 
Grigoriev, an artillery officer. Some of these were 
found guilty of implication in the murder of MM. 
Sipyagin and Bogdanovitch and the attack on Prince 
Obolensky. The incriminating information was obtained 
from Grigoriev and his wife, and from Kachour, who 
was brought from Schlusselburg to give evidence, and 
whose mind appeared to be unhinged. Gershouni and 
Melinkov were sentenced to be imprisoned in Schlussel- 
burg for life, Grigoriev to four years' penal servitude ; 
Miss Remyannikov, who had only been guilty of circu- 
lating illegal literature, to three months' imprisonment 
and police supervision afterwards, and Veytsenfeld to 
four years' hard labour. 

It is also significant that during the four years 
covered by the above list of thirteen assassinations and 
eleven attempts, not a single attack has been made 
upon the person of the Tsar. Nicholas II. has, in fact, 
reduced the throne to insignificance. The Autocracy 
is a thing of the past ; the Oligarchy is the universally 
recognized enemy. It was not as a member of the royal 
family, but as a high official, that the Grand Duke 
Sergius was removed, and this act only took place when 



330 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

for many years he had proved his absolute unscrupu- 
lousness in the use of force against those whom he chose 
to consider the foes of public order. For a dozen years, 
as Governor- General of Moscow, he was directly re- 
sponsible for the Jewish expulsions, the shooting down 
and imprisonment of students and workmen, and other 
acts of tyranny. He was, perhaps, of all the anti- 
Semites of the Russian official world the most notori- 
ously virulent. His petty despotism was illustrated in 
August last, before there was any sign of the events 
which culminated in St. Petersburg on Bloody Sunday, 
by a decree forbidding the Educational Improvement 
Society of Moscow to collect newspapers and other 
publications for transmission to the army in Manchuria, 
"as such activity on the part of the Society is not 
mentioned in its rules and does not correspond to its pro- 
fessed aims." This is an exceedingly trivial illustration 
of the temper of the man whose death may with con- 
fidence be traced to the orders which he gave the troops, 
still under his command in the Moscow Military District, 
in the early winter of last year, and the way in which 
they were executed during the recent strikes. Although 
he had a personal character even blacker than his public 
record, he continued to hold influence with Nicholas II. 
Whatever feeling one may have as to the manner of his 
end, it is unquestionable that it lifted a heavy cloud 
from the life of the old capital of the Empire. 

So much for the extremer rebels and the body, 
separate in its personnel and funds, but under the 
general direction of the central committee of the Revo- 
lutionary Party in the choice of times and seasons, 
which in the end has defeated some of its boldest and 
most resourceful adversaries. 

It is pleasant to turn, by way of reminder that 
there is a small but growing group of sincere, earnest, 



TERRORISTS AND REFORMERS 331 

and gifted radicals, who pursue the same end of national 
liberation by purely pacific means, to two outstanding 
figures that had been known sympathetically to English 
readers for some years before the recent crisis turned 
them into active politicians — the two authors Korolenko 
and Gorky. 

It is more than ten years since, at the house of 
a Russian refugee, I met Vladimir Korolenko, then, 
after Tolstoy, the most highly rated living Russian 
novelist (for Gorky had not yet come up from the 
world of outcasts), a robust, unemotional young-middle- 
aged man, with keen black eyes and a shock of dark 
crisp hair creeping far over his cheeks. The roll of 
modern Russian literature is a roll of martyrdom ; 
hardly a name upon it but stands for shame and suffer- 
ing at the hands of a ruling class bound in long 
conspiracy against free intelligence and humanitarian 
fervour. Pushkin, for a skit upon a royal favourite, 
was six years under the ban. Lermontov was repeatedly 
punished. Shevchenko, the greatest poet of Little 
Russia, lived under perpetual pain of the lash, only 
escaping his early enemies — his stepmother, the parish 
clerk, and the farmer whom he served as swineherd — to 
fall beneath the whip of those in civil and military 
authority. Alexander Herzen, a long time imprisoned, 
was finally banished for life. The gentle Tchernichevsky, 
after being entombed awhile in the fortress, was pilloried 
before a St. Petersburg mob and condemned to fourteen 
years' hard labour at the mines and perpetual exile in 
Siberia. This living death lasted twenty-five years, 
until, mind and body alike completely broken, the kind 
release came. Turgeniev, for his eulogy of Gogol — 
albeit the great satirist had died as mad a mystic as 
any Romanov could desire — was thrown into prison, 
and then driven out of Russian society. Dostoyevsky, 



332 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

the most loudly acclaimed and nearly the greatest writer 
of his later day, they actually dragged out upon a public 
scaffold, stripped to the shirt, and then read out their 
sentence, which was that he should be shot out of hand. 
At the last moment these precious judges thought the 
shooting too great a mercy, and so they had the poor 
wretch fettered, shaved, and cast into the filthy cauldron 
of Siberian prison-life, flogged while suffering from an 
epileptic attack, and otherwise tortured during what 
should have been his ten best and most fruitful years. 
These are but a few of the many ; and Korolenko, who 
has followed in the same hard path, must be accounted 
fortunate in being, at fifty-two, a free, if not a favoured, 
man. At twenty it promised otherwise. He was then 
absorbed in the strangely fascinating life of a hungry 
student in Moscow, among hundreds in like predica- 
ment ; among them, yet not of them — destined, not for 
agriculture, but for art. The first rumblings of revolu- 
tion were waking hope and alarm ; and the precocious 
students suffered among the first. Young Vladimir, for 
his part in a petition, was ordered off to the Government 
of Vologda, but on the way was countermanded to his 
home in Cronstadt, where he was strictly watched. At 
the height of the Terror, Korolenko, then in St. Peters- 
burg, was called upon to pay the seemingly inevitable 
price of genius and conscience. Arrested by one of the 
mistakes which are common in Russia, and, indeed, are 
inherent in an arbitrary system like that of " adminis- 
trative process," he was banished in 1879 to Glazov, in 
the northern province of Viatka, and thence moved still 
further north to Vyshne Volotsk. Long afterwards 
it leaked out that his imaginary offence was that of 
escaping from a gaol to which he had never been com- 
mitted. He was soon removed to Perm, and began 
writing, with no very encouraging result. The next 




MAXIM GORKY AND LEONIDE ANDREYEV. 




VLADIMIR KOROLENKO. 



TERRORISTS AND REFORMERS 333 

penalty, however idiotic it may appear, was at least not 
the result of a mere blunder. Among other suspects, 
Korolenko was in 1881 called upon formally to swear 
allegiance to the new Tsar. Along with many who 
were no revolutionaries, he refused, and was packed off 
to Amgee, in the province of Yakutsk, to make a bare 
subsistence as an agricultural labourer, fortunate in 
having a hut to himself, and so being spared too close 
contact with the very undesirable natives of those parts. 
Three years passed — a hard but invaluable experience, 
as "Makar" and "The Sakhalinian " testify; then he 
was free to return to Novgorod and his family. 

This bare outline may easily be filled in by his 
simplest reader. The paternal despotism which claps 
the boy into gaol and leaves the man free to develop 
his riper but no less revolutionary thought displays its 
imbecility so plainly that it is impossible to believe it 
can long survive. Korolenko's first stories were pub- 
lished in 1879, but it was not till long afterwards that 
he became known to British and American readers.* 
"The Blind Musician" and "In Two Moods" are 
powerful psychological studies. The minor stories con- 
tain some vividly drawn characters, and an astonishing 
wealth of scenic impressions. Sounds, lights, dreams, 
trivialities of movement and touch — nothing escapes 
this wonderful observer. I know no such picture of 
student life in Muscovy as he gives in a few easy 
pages. How and when did one not blind and no longer 
a lad divine the innermost experiences of the marred 
childish spirit ? The life of the far Asian wilderness 

* " The Blind Musician." Tr. by S. Stepniak and W. Westall. London : 
Ward & Downey. 1890. " In Two Moods " and " In Bad Society." Same 
translators and publishers. 1892. " Makar's Dream, etc." — " The Saghalien 
Convict, etc." " The Pseudonym Library." London; Fisher Un win. 1892. 
A volume of Siberian sketches was translated by Mrs. Aline Delano and 
publishedin New York (Crowell), as far back as 1887. 



334 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

grows up afresh from his page, and Nature always 
seems to have some new secret in store for him. Above 
all, he has tested his own prescription. Warm humour, 
healthy manly energy are not so common in the best 
Russian literature that I need apologize for recalling 
these half-forgotten books. Of recent years Korolenko 
has held an accepted leadership in the literary society 
of his country, and his influence and known opinions 
were indicated by his presiding at the remarkable 
banquet of nearly 700 persons, including other promi- 
nent literary men and women, in St. Petersburg on 
December 3, when resolutions demanding liberty of 
speech, belief, publication, and meeting, equal civic and 
racial rights, and the summoning of a constituent 
assembly, were unanimously adopted. Korolenko was 
not in the capital on the morrow of " Bloody Sunday," 
when Gorky and other of his friends were arrested, but 
he took an early opportunity of expressing his sympathy 
and agreement with them. 

The work of the younger author is more forcible, 
more recent, and so better known to the outer world. 
Like most of the men with whom he has been acting, 
Maxim Gorky (whose real name is M. A. M. Peshkov) 
had suffered before at the hands of the Russian police. 
It is not many years since he was a humble watchman 
in the goods department of the Gryazi-Tsaritsin Rail- 
way. One of his employers preserved the following 
characteristic note scribbled by him at this time : — " I 
have made friends with my colleagues, have learned 
my duties to perfection, and carry them out accurately. 
The station-master is satisfied, and as a mark of his 
confidence entrusts me with the duty of emptying all 
the kitchen slops every morning. Please let me know 
whether it is part of my duty to carry the slops from 
the station-master's kitchen ." He was presently 



TERRORISTS AND REFORMERS 335 

promoted to the post of caretaker of the railway brooms ! 
The struggles of his early life are indicated in his books. 
His literary gifts were, however, almost immediately 
recognized, and he soon became, as pre-eminently the 
spokesman of the outcast and oppressed, the hero of 
those consciously striving for liberty. Twice he was 
imprisoned on trivial pretexts — once at Tiflis, shortly 
after writing his first book, and once at Nijni Novgorod. 
In March, 1902, he was summoned under paragraph 
1035 of the Civil Code, which is directed against " any 
abusive criticism of laws or orders operative in the 
Empire, with the intention of shaking the public faith 
in them." The offence consisted in having signed a 
letter of protest against the brutalities of the police in 
suppressing the student riots in St. Peterburg. Being 
in bad health, and being now a popular favourite, the 
punishment for this dire offence was limited to banish- 
ment in the Crimea under police supervision. At the 
end of the year this measure of "discipline' 7 was 
modified. By order of the Government, however, and 
in spite of protests by Tolstoy, Korolenko, Tchekov, and 
others, Gorky's name was struck off the roll of honorary 
members of the Russian Academy. I have spoken of 
his part in the agitation for peace and liberty during 
the short interval of free speech. On January 22 he 
had a narrow escape from being shot along with the 
demonstrators. The conditions of his month's imprison- 
ment in the Petropavlovsk fortress were just as they 
have been described by M. Rosenbaum and Dr. Soskice 
in earlier chapters. He was stripped naked, closely 
examined, and then clad in prison clothes. The cell 
was dry but cold, and so dark as to require artificial 
light after the mid-afternoon. On a man already pre- 
disposed to consumption, such confinement, with the 
aggravation of absolute silence and complete uncertainty 



3tf RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

as to the future, must soon have proved fatal. After a 
few days, however, he was allowed to see his wife and 
a friend (through double wire screens), and to work 
upon a new drama, " Children of the Sun." Bail of 
£1000 being provided by S. Morosov, the Moscow 
merchant, and some literary friends, he was released, 
but his request to be allowed to go to the Crimea was 
refused ; and he was sent to Riga to await trial on the 
charge of having written a paper declaring that as a 
result of the recent events the prestige of the Tsardom 
had been destroyed. Truth is not permitted by the 
oligarchy even when it has become a hoary truism. 



CHAPTER XXIII 

THE PROSPECTS OF THE REVOLUTION 

It is easy to speak of revolution, but who knows what 
revolution means in twentieth-century conditions ? 
That the old regime in Russia can continue without 
grave modification is, I think, plainly impossible. One 
after another, every section of the community, except 
the Court and the bureaucracy, has been alienated. 
Manufacturers and merchants have found that the ultra- 
Protectionist system established by M. Witte, while it 
might for a time suit a few favoured individuals, was 
no stable basis for national industry and trade, and that 
the war which in its origins was closely connected with 
that policy has brought nothing but ruin in its train. 
Like humbler members of society, though, no doubt, in 
less painful degree, they too are at the mercy of officials 
insatiable in their thirst for bribes, and, without any 
court of appeal, they are subject to a special complica- 
tion of restrictions on business. The professional man 
and woman are suspect as such, and the tale of their 
sufferings is endless. From the time of Gogol down to 
that of Gorky and Korolenko, there is hardly a single 
gifted and recognized author who has not suffered 
imprisonment or exile, the striking exception being the 
heroic figure of Tolstoy. The higher schools and 
Universities of the Empire are continually subject to 
the violent intrusion of the police, their professors 

337 Z 



338 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

removed, their classes closed, bodies of their students 
rusticated or sent into penal battalions. At the same 
time the Press is under the tutelage of an ignorant and 
freakish censorship, with the inevitable result of the 
establishment all over the country of secret printing- 
offices, and the organized smuggling of great masses of 
books and smaller papers over the western frontiers. 
Worst of all is the lot of the peasantry, now finally 
disillusioned, in their famine-stricken villages, of the 
bright hopes raised by their Emancipation forty years 
ago. 

When to this vast body of discontent was added, in 
every one of the growing towns of the Empire, large 
groups of mechanics and labourers becoming ever more 
conscious of the contrast between their pitiful lot and 
that of their Western fellows, the precipitation of an 
acute crisis was only a question of time and opportunity. 
These men may be like our own workmen in the days 
of Peterloo, rough uninstructed fellows ; but many of 
them are capable of tending the same delicate machinery 
that is working in the mills of Preston, the workshops 
of Sheffield, and the arsenal of Woolwich ; and, for the 
rest, no one who has understood his history will share 
the less intelligent townsman's contempt for the shrewd 
if untutored peasant. There was nothing abstruse in 
the demands of the St. Petersburg strikers, and the 
simplest part of those demands is that which most 
affects the whole of the Kussian people without dis- 
tinction — the petition for personal security, freedom of 
discussion, and the guarantee of progress which can be 
secured in no other way than through some form of 
responsible government. It is evident that the educa- 
tion and the spirit of these workmen have been under- 
rated. Patience is ingrained in the Russian character 
till it becomes a positive weakness. The minimum of 



PROSPECTS OF THE REVOLUTION 339 

organization shown in the recent phase of the struggle 
has been evolved in face of obstacles and penalties such 
as have perhaps never faced any popular movement in 
the history of the world. With whatever admixture of 
precocity and rashness, the early revolutionary move- 
ment of thirty years ago showed abundant power of 
self-sacrifice, a devotion, perhaps, never before equalled. 
In the present case the Russian Government has to face 
a much more alarming phenomenon. For the first 
time the organized workmen of the Empire stand before 
them with a resolute challenge, and with the evident 
sympathjT- and support of every other non-official class 
of the people. 

Bullets and bayonets have never served more than 
a temporary purpose in an emergency of such propor- 
tions as this, and they are less than ever likely to serve 
now that there is no longer a Plehve at the head of the 
Ministry of the Interior, practised and keen in all the 
arts of coercion. Along the road of armed repression, I 
confess I see nothing but a long and bitter agony for 
the people, and a series of awful and shameful losses 
for the whole official class from the monarch downwards. 
Town after town will rise in sympathy with the capital ; 
Poland, Finland, and the other subject borderlands will 
see their too-long- delayed opportunity. And if, when 
the land has been saturated with the blood of its 
most active and intelligent children, the order of death 
is ever restored, this hollow victory will be but the 
opening of a new era of assassination and outrage that 
will eclipse in horror the deeds of the earlier " terrorists." 
From such a spectacle, the whole world, and not only 
every good Russian, will pray that we may be delivered. 

Recent events have wrought a change in British 
opinion that is curious to one who has watched for 
many years past the steps by which this point has 



340 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

been reached. But one still constantly meets with the 
objection that the people of Eussia are not prepared 
for, and even do not desire, representative government, 
and the question, How can a revolution succeed so long 
as the Army remains loyal ? What is the answer to 
these sceptics ? 

In the first place I reply that, in the long story of 
liberation movements, there is no modern instance in 
which the living forces have been so conspicuously ranged 
on one side and the dead forces so conspicuously on the 
other. Consider, at the outset, the situation of the 
Government. It does not contain a single Minister 
who can be termed a powerful statesman. When M. 
von Plehve fell before the bomb of Sazonov and Sigorsky, 
it was as though the centre-pin had fallen out of the 
coercionist machine. Prince Sviatopolk-Mirsky brought 
good intentions, but no other strength to the vacated 
office. There was an invaluable moment, in which out- 
raged society took breath and drew its scattered and 
various forces together. That is what Russia owes to 
Sviatopolk-Mirsky, and nothing more. That more was 
impossible in the situation proves less the weakness of 
the Home Secretary who was then nominally in office 
than the hopelessness of the whole Governmental system 
in which he bore an unwilling part. While the popular 
forces were steadily concentrating — while Annensky and 
Hessen, Gorky and Korolenko, and a score of men less 
widely known were rallying the cultured class, and a 
hundred Gapons up and down the country were perfect- 
ing the organization of the workmen — the Ministerial 
bureaux in the capital were the scene of ceaseless intrigues, 
feuds of official mannikins who do not appear even to 
have had sense enough to see that if they did not hang 
together they stood a very good chance of hanging 
separately. Divide et Inipera was the old bureaucratic 



PROSPECTS OF THE REVOLUTION 341 

motto, but to-day it is working the other way. The 
great tehin, long supposed invincible, is divided against 
itself, as well as discredited in the eyes of the whole 
middle class ; its old supports in the moderate nobility 
are alienated, even when they have not, as in such 
cases as those of Prince Troubetskoy and the mayors of 
several provincial towns, gone over openly to the Op- 
position. Friction has repeatedly arisen between the 
police and the troops, and the various Ministries have 
been divided into rival camps of appellants for the 
momentary favour of the Tsar. 

This official confusion could not but be aggravated, 
as the reformers were encouraged and hardened, by the 
collapse of the unfortunate young man in whose name 
the massacre of January 22 was carried out. It has 
taken a long time and an infinity of suffering to dispose 
of the myth of a humane Tsar. Every one who knew 
anything about Nicholas II. knew from the outset of 
his reign that his amiability was limited not only by an 
utter weakness of will, but also by a tendency to what 
is politely called mysticism, which was likely in any 
crisis to make him a mere tool of the reactionaries, and 
especially the clerical reactionaries, who surrounded him. 
Against these influences his wife has never had more 
than a momentary power. The arch-inquisitor Pobye- 
donostsev has never lost his dominance in the Imperial 
family, and the traces of his control can be found in 
the acts and speeches of the Tsar from the beginning 
of the reign onward. The hectoring reply to the zemstvo 
petitions of last winter was precisely in the spirit of the 
lecture which the Tsar delivered to a deputation of 
peasants from the province of Tver directly after his 
accession. But if the fearful disaster which reddened 
the Khodinsky plain in Moscow while the Coronation 
festivities were proceeding in the neighbouring palace 



342 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

failed to rouse the Russian people out of their lethargy, 
it is far otherwise to-day. The clock moves even in 
Russia. The Tsar's refusal to hold any communication 
with the strikers meant much more to Russians, who 
still have the primitive right of direct appeal to the 
Sovereign, than to the citizens of a Constitutional State ; 
and that the manner of this refusal has made a deep 
and indelible impression is evident from the fact that 
for the first time cries of direct antagonism to the 
monarchy have been raised in the public streets and in 
manifestoes assured of a national circulation. After 
all, the kindly ignorance of the average Britisher as to 
the character of Nicholas was but a reflection of the 
kindly ignorance of the mass of his subjects. This has 
long been a disappearing quantity, for dropping water 
will wear away even a stone, and repeated refusals of 
the most moderate demands, repeated sanction of the 
most barbarous acts, must at length come home even to 
a peasant population the majority of whom cannot read 
or write. When it became universally known, not only 
that the Tsar refused to hear the despairing petition of 
peaceful workmen, as his Ministers had already done, 
not only that he sent the soldiery instead to clear the 
streets with bullets and bayonets, but that, before the 
crisis created by his own cowardice, he ran away, first 
to one palace and then to another — when this extra- 
ordinary intelligence penetrated from town to town, 
and from village to village, one of the last props of the 
oligarchy fell, and it became only a matter of time for 
the whole structure, discredited, divided, bankrupt, and 
now put to open shame, to fall to the ground. 

" St. Petersburg is the last city in Europe for an 
ill-armed and undisciplined mob to tackle," says a 
pessimistic writer, and he adds : " The question whether 
the present outbreak will succeed is identical with the 



PROSPECTS OF THE REVOLUTION 343 

question, Will the troops remain loyal ? Russians have 
not yet learned the art of street fighting. The St. 
Petersburgers have no leaders of repute. In short, all 
indications so far go to show that the Government will 
triumph." We may expect this note to be struck, with 
many variations, as the movement passes from the 
phase of a few dramatic events in the capitals into that 
of a wearing routine struggle throughout the country ; 
but I venture to think that this sort of objection is so 
far wide of the mark as to be almost pointless in regard 
to the situation now developing. Nobody supposed 
that a coup d'etat in St. Petersburg was possible last 
January ; no single, group of the Opposition had any 
such mad hope, and nobody was prepared for armed 
action of any kind. St. Petersburg is, it is quite true, 
the least hopeful scene in the Empire for such a struggle, 
not alone because of the difficulties of street fighting in 
the capital, but because there the military and police 
forces are strongest, and the industrial population com- 
paratively less numerous and organized than in a dozen 
other towns of the Empire. This fact is, however, the 
strongest possible testimony to the strength of the 
national movement. There had been several recent 
battues in the streets of the capital, but most of the 
victims had hitherto been the students, only a few 
individual workmen being involved. For instance, 
when the demonstration on the Nevsky Prospekt on 
November 28-December 11 last was broken up by 
mounted police, gendarmes, and dvorniks, the wounded, 
given in the official report as forty- two and really much 
more numerous, only included, of the working class, two 
railway men and two labourers. If the application of 
the state of siege has not succeeded in suppressing the 
pioneers of revolt in thirty years, very much less likely 
is it to succeed in suppressing a revolted nation now 



344 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

that the workmen even of the Government factories in 
the capital have been driven to the last desperate resort 
of outraged humanity. Nor is leadership lacking. The 
revolutionists of thirty years ago, men, some of them, 
who can be compared with Kossuth and Garibaldi or 
any other liberators of the West, were leaders without 
followers ; there are followers enough to-day and more 
leaders than ever, behind the veil. What happens 
immediately in St. Petersburg is of secondary import- 
ance. It is precisely because this is not a rising in the 
capital after the old-time Western fashion, but a wide- 
spread movement embracing the capacities of every 
class of all the peoples of the empire, that I am con- 
fident, not indeed of immediate results, for it may last 
long, but for steady progress and victory in the early 
future. Paris fashions do not run everywhere. The 
Boers taught us, at considerable cost, that modern 
weapons lend themselves to other kinds of use than 
those usual on the Old World drill-ground. The 
Eussians will now show us that there are other sorts 
of revolution than those known to our English history 
books. 

The importance of the attitude of the Army — or 
rather of that part of it which is left in Europe — in 
the present crisis, is too evident to need any insistence. 
The Government has in the chief towns large bodies of 
ordinary police and gendarmes at its service, but these 
would alone be utterly powerless against such demon- 
strations as are now taking place. In fact, for some 
years past the calling out of the soldiery in times of 
labour agitation has been resorted to. On several 
occasions of this kind the troops have refused to fire, 
but these occurrences have, as far as is authentically 
known, been so infrequent that I do not lay any stress 
upon them in attempting to answer the question — Can 



PROSPECTS OF THE REVOLUTION 345 

the Army be relied upon to suppress their fellows 
among the peasantry and workmen, now that the flag 
of revolt is seriously raised ? There is, however, little 
doubt that for three years past at least there has been a 
steady growth of what is called " seditious " feeling in 
the army, although how deeply this has sunk into the 
men's minds it is difficult to say. I have before me the 
text of a number of circulars of which the earliest, 
marked " Most confidential," was issued as far back as 
August, 1902, by General Kuropatkin to the generals 
commanding the different military districts of the 
empire. u The attempts of political agitators," it begins, 
" to carry on propaganda among the troops, which were 
in former times comparatively rare phenomena, have 
occurred more frequently of late, and have become so 
bold that they make it necessary to fix special attention 
on them." Then followed details of about a dozen 
separate cases in which flysheets had been sent to and 
circulated, sometimes " in considerable numbers," among 
the officers and men of various garrisons, from St. 
Petersburg to Krasnoyarsk in Siberia, these manifestoes 
exhorting the army not to raise their arms against their 
brethren, the peasants and workmen. In one case, 
said the General, " organized propaganda was detected 
among the rank and file of the Ekaterinoslav Grenadier 
Guards," being carried on not only by outsiders, " but 
even by the privates themselves. At the head of this 
organization was a soldier, of the noble class, one 
Alshansky, who purposely concealed his privilege of 
serving for a shorter term in order to be able to carry 
on propaganda among the rank and file for a longer 
time. During his service in the ranks Alshansky spread 
his revolutionary ideas with much energy, by personal 
talk as well as by the spreading in large quantities of 
pamphlets, manifestoes, and the like. Some of the 



346 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

privates became direct co-workers in Alshansky's criminal 
activity, while others showed connivance, or were guilty 
of not reporting what was going on." The circular 
went on to refer to another case of the kind, and 
suggested that, " given the necessary caution and dis- 
simulation in the activity of the agitators, many such 
instances have probably remained undiscovered." 

If there was this cause for anxiety three years ago, 
much more ground is there to-day, when the army, as 
well as the civil population, is filled with disgust over 
the disasters of a useless war. Before the war began 
the increasing frequency of the discovery of subversive 
literature in barracks had given rise to a further series 
of secret circulars, in which officers were instructed to 
exercise the strictest surveillance over their men, to 
carry out periodical searches of the soldiers' quarters, 
and even of their persons, and to limit as far as possible 
their contact with the outside world. As a consequence 
arrests have been made during the last two years in 
Odessa, Kovno, Byelostok, and other towns, and even 
in the Imperial Guards a number of soldiers have been 
tried and punished for reading and circulating " illegal " 
literature. Two men named Stervin and Shiglovsky, of 
one of these high- class regiments, for instance, were 
sentenced in August last to eight years of convict work 
in the Siberian mines and three years of penitentiary 
labour respectively. Stimulated by the unpopularity 
of the war and by the stern measures taken to suppress 
the public feeling, the discontent both in the army and 
the navy has greatly increased of late, and the recent 
mutinous incidents in the Baltic Fleet, the outbreak 
at Cronstadt, the burning down of the naval arsenal at 
Sevastopol, of which the Government suggests no other 
explanation, the incident of the Neva salute, and the 
frequent resistance of the mobilization of reserves, 



PROSPECTS OF THE REVOLUTION 347 

especially in the Polish towns, are sufficient to prove 
that the discontent of the common soldiers and sailors, 
who are only peasants and workmen at one remove, has 
become a grave factor in the situation. At Radom, 
for instance, in November last, the place had to be filled 
with troops before the mobilization could be carried out 
at all, and even then it was delayed for several days by 
a street conflict — in which an infantry commandant, 
Colonel Bulakov, another officer, .and a gendarme were 
killed — and by the blowing up of two bridges with 
dynamite. At the New Year an Imperial order was 
issued subjecting to punishment by court-martial re- 
servists who took part in " excesses " when called up ; 
and though this decree was moderated *' on representa- 
tions being made " to those responsible, it has been 
carried out in a number of cases, notably in that of the 
" mutinous " reservists at Volkovsk in the province of 
Grodno in March last, five of whom were executed, 
four sentenced to penal servitude for life, and eight to 
penal servitude for twenty years. 

Official statements to the contrary notwithstanding, 
it was evident so early as last midsummer, when I 
visited Moscow and Warsaw, that the Manchurian war 
was very far from being popular. An unbroken series 
of reverses on land and sea, culminating in the North 
Sea incident, the fall of Port Arthur — in circum- 
stances which, if the Times Peking correspondent is 
right, themselves point to deep demoralization — and 
the disaster of Mukden, must have affected the spirit of 
the army as seriously as the simultaneous suffering at 
home affected the spirit of the civil population. Never 
was the division between men of war and men of peace 
more clearly exhibited. As the cry, " Down with the 
Tsardom ! " has been raised openly by a mass of common 
people for the first time, so for the first time the cry, 



348 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

" Stop the war ! M has been openly raised by all sorts 
and conditions of men. Upon ground so prepared there 
fall such words as those contained in one of Father 
Gapon's epistles : " Against soldiers and officers who 
are slaying their innocent brothers, together with the 
wives and children of these, and against all oppressors 
of the people, I utter my pastoral curse. Upon soldiers 
who help the nation to win liberty I invoke a blessing, 
and from the military oath of allegiance which they 
took to the traitorous Tsar, at whose behest the blood 
of innocent people was shed, I hereby absolve them." 
If, in face of all this, tradition and the threats of 
General Trepov and the gang of subordinate despots in 
the provinces prove sufficient to hold the soldiery to its 
unspeakable task, it must be admitted that we are but 
on the eve of a long and terrible struggle — a war 
between the Russian people and the subject nation- 
alities on the one hand, and the army, the bureaucracy, 
and the Court on the other. It is difficult to conceive, 
and revolting even for a moment to consider, such a 
prospect. But if it must be considered, I hold con- 
fidently still that the people will win. For a coup 
d'etat Russian conditions are almost impossibly difficult ; 
for a slowly gathering insurrectionary movement they 
are very favourable, especially so long as the great 
body of the effective army is locked up in the Far East, 
involving a steady drain on the whole of the resources 
of the Government. The great towns are widely sepa- 
rated by nature, and they can be easily yet more 
effectually isolated. In Moscow, Odessa, Warsaw, Riga, 
Kovno, Reval, Kishinev, Lodz, Ekaterinoslav, Baku, 
and half a dozen other industrial centres, the workmen 
have already suffered their baptism of fire, and they 
are now again afoot. Even if all those towns could 
be permanently occupied and coerced, it would be 



PROSPECTS OF THE REVOLUTION 349 

quite impossible to deal with a jacquerie in the thinly- 
populated country to which the struggle would be 
momentarily diverted. In the final resort there 
would be a revival of terrorism on a scale hitherto 
unimagined. 

But if the infatuated continuance of the struggle 
against the Japanese has seriously aggravated the 
problem for the Government, it by no means follow 
that it will be solved by the conclusion of peace. The 
oligarchy is infatuated enough, but its madness is not 
quite so unmethodical as it seems to the superficial 
observer. The difficulties in the way of its appealing 
for peace are perfectly real, and it is in these difficulties 
that we shall find the explanation of the otherwise 
inexplicable course it has pursued. When Nicholas II. 
said, on the eve of the Mukden debacle, that he would 
continue the war till his power was re-established on 
the waters of the Pacific, he may have supposed that 
he was imposing upon a credulous world ; but there 
is no reason to believe that he really entertained this 
mighty aim. Bluif is the incurable habit of the 
hardened Imperialist. Russia meant land-grabbing, 
exploitation, monopoly in the Far East ; everything 
but war, for which she was in no way ready. Bluff is 
useless to-day ; but if a man cannot be silent and must 
not speak the truth, what would you ? No ! it was not 
the Pacific the Imperial mannikin was thinking of, but 
something much nearer and more urgent. It was all 
very well for sagacious outsiders to say that it was no 
disgrace or humiliation to acknowledge and abandon a 
task physically impossible. It can never be easy to 
acknowledge defeat at the hands of an enemy one began 
by despising. But for a military theocracy, a Govern- 
ment resting absolutely on force and superstition, until 
it was absolutely compelled, to acknowledge defeat at 



350 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

the hands of an enemy whom it has ridiculed as a 
nation of monkey-faced barbarians, against whom it has 
brought out its best armies and its most treasured ikons, 
and to whom it had already sacrificed a great fleet and 
a great fortress and scores of thousands of lives, this 
would be a humiliation so disastrous that the oligarchy 
might well tremble at the thought of it and hope 
against hope for some way of escape. Who would have 
applauded the authors of so brave a decision ? Not the 
guardians of the sacred but useless ikons ; not stay-at- 
home dukes, or the servile bureaucracy, or the con- 
tractors who were making fortunes after the manner of 
their kind in war time. Not the stop-the-war demon- 
strators, although this was their demand ; for they were 
at least as anxious for liberty as for peace, the stoppage 
of the war being indeed only a step toward a greater 
end which they would be encouraged to pursue with 
greater vigour than ever. So with the rest of the 
people. Every mind would be relieved, but none grate- 
ful. The manufacturers and merchants, some of whose 
most important markets and sources of supply had been 
cut off when the Siberian railway was taken over for 
the army, and whose home demand was reduced by the 
constant drafting away of reserves, while prices were 
rising and labour troubles gathering, would rejoice, but 
they could hardly be expected to thank a Government 
which had involved them, not in one compaign but in 
two, of which the graver would be left further than 
ever from settlement. The zemstvos and municipal 
councils, which have had to help to maintain hundreds 
of thousands of women and children for a year past ? 
Yes, provided that the worst of the burden was not to 
come ; but that must depend largely on the terms of 
peace. The peasantry ? Yes, but peace will not give 
them back their dead, or erase the broad impression of 



PROSPECTS OF THE REVOLUTION 351 

this immeasurable crime. And the army — the already 
discontented, now wholly disillusioned army ? In a 
word, the benefits of peace could at best only come 
slowly, and they would not come at all, the scene of 
warfare would only be transferred, unless the oligarchy 
itself abdicated. 

The difficulty takes a still more material and urgent 
shape. To be compelled to make peace meant not only 
the sacrifice of all designs on China and the China 
Sea, not only humiliation abroad and at home : it meant 
also having to pay a substantial indemnity, and this 
was only possible by the aid of the Western money- 
lenders, who are getting very tired of these particular 
clients, and whose interests, hardly less than those 
of the Russian peasant and workman, require that the 
oligarchy should abdicate. The Tsar is in his own 
" right " many times a millionaire ; but unfortunately 
the days have not come when the war-lords are required 
to pay for their own adventures. The State Exchequer 
is practically insolvent. It is reaching the end of its 
borrowing powers, and to raise more money in any 
substantial amounts by taxation is simply impossible. 
To reform the system must at best be a work of years — 
a work that can only be carried out by new men under 
full publicity with a national mandate. The financial 
credit of the old regime is shattered. A war indemnity 
is the last straw. Such, I imagine, is the impasse in 
which the Tsar and his advisers find themselves. 
Their destiny awaits them whether they go forward or 
backward. 

The hypocritical optimism of M. Kokovtsev's Budget 
statement for 1905 deceived no one. Nobody expected 
that he would place all the cards on the table ; but 
calmly to cut out the whole question of the cost of the 
war, save for a sentence in which it is estimated to 



352 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

have involved an expenditure of about sixty-five mil- 
lion pounds up to the end of last year, was too much 
for the patience even of comparatively disinterested 
English financiers. What the war has cost and what 
has been spent are, of course, two very different things. 
Even on the official figures the outlook is bad enough. 
The balance at the opening of the present year may be 
thus summarized : — 

Million roubles. 

From free balances 157 

By reduction of expenditure 148 

Two loans of 1904 432 

737 
Less war expenditure 621 

116 

To this twelve millions sterling has been added the 
product of the last German loan, say £21,000,000, and 
the internal loan of £20,000,000, giving a total of 
£53,000,000, or enough to continue the war — if all 
these official figures were reliable — till midsummer 
without further borrowing. But the Estimates are a 
farrago of suppression on the one side, and exaggera- 
tion on the other. The cost of the war, which had 
steadily increased, must have been at the very least 
half as large again as the estimate above quoted, or 
£120,000,000 per annum. At the same time, the 
ordinary expenditure of the Empire must be immensely 
larger, and the income for the present year consider- 
ably smaller, than the Minister who boasts that 
"there has been no serious disturbance either in the 
State finances or the national prosperity" dared to 
budget for. The liquor monopoly, as we have seen 
(pp. 134, 139), is expected to produce as much as last 
year (£52,000,000), although it had already begun to 
fall off before the strikers took to wrecking the vodka 



PROSPECTS OF THE REVOLUTION 353 

shops. The State railways are expected to produce 
much more, although the only increasing traffic is that 
of the army. The total revenue is, in fact, left practi- 
cally at last year's figure. On the other hand, the 
ordinary expenditure of the War Office and the cost 
of the Home Office, which includes the police, are sup- 
posed to increase by less than a million sterling each, 
though every big city is an armed camp. Prison ex- 
penditure is to be cut down, though the prisons are 
overflowing. Outlay on railways and other urgently 
needed public works is to be rigorously reduced, and yet 
trade and labour are to bear more than the old burden 
of taxation ! The whole scheme is so extraordinarily 
stupid that we can only suppose that M. Kokovtsev 
has as poor an idea of the intelligence of the Western 
investor as of the educated class of his own people. 
It may be that the truth, or even a large modicum of 
the truth, would have proved fatal to the latest loan 
negotiations. But was it any better to issue a document 
full of quite evidently false estimates, and prefaced by 
the announcement that " the Budget now presented to 
your Imperial Majesty does not include the estimates 
of the Extraordinary Expenditure to be incurred in 
1905 for carrying on the war with Japan " ? 

The distracted condition of the Government financiers 
was amusingly illustrated when, after the appearance of 
two articles by Mr. Lucien Wolf in the Times in March 
last, in which a happy analogy was drawn between the 
famous gold reserve and the safe in which Mme. 
Humbert kept her mythical millions, M. Kokovtsev 
telegraphed a panic-stricken challenge to this and other 
British journals to send representatives over to St. 
Petersburg to examine the treasure in the vaults of the 
State Bank. The negotiations for a new French loan had 
just broken down, while Japan was about to receive the 

2 A 



354 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

offer of ten times as much as she wanted. No wonder 
that M. Kokovtsev was agitated. But the challenge 
was as futile as it was undignified. The undoubted 
existence of a substantial fund in gold did not in any 
way settle the question whether official Russia was in- 
solvent. Even if it could meet its liabilities in normal 
times, the question remained how much of this hoard, 
if any, was available toward the costs of the war. Why, 
indeed, if it had in hand, as was claimed, a realizable 
reserve of nearly a hundred million pounds sterling, 
should the Russian Government have been prostrating 
itself before the money-lenders of Europe ? 

We have seen that for years before the war it had 
been conducting its business at a loss, which was only 
made good by continual borrowing. In examining the 
Budget (p. 133) it was shown that in the years 1896- 
1905 (not including war expenditure) the " ordinary" 
Budgets gave surpluses amounting to £122 millions, 
while the " extraordinary " Budgets gave deficits 
amounting to £175*7 millions. There was thus a 
net deficit of £53*3 millions in the ten years, a 
considerably worse result than that of the previous 
decade. This record is confirmed, so far as they go, 
by the statistics of the balance of foreign trade. The 
latest British Statistical Abstract for foreign countries 
gives the following details for Russia, in the years 
1892-1901, in millions of pounds sterling : — 

Exports. Imports. Balance. 

Merchandise 688-5 577-2 +111-3 

Bullion and Specie 38-4 118-5 - 80'0 



Net surplus of Exports £31,223,000 

In the later years, for which full returns are not yet 
available, the export drain has been larger, but if we 
place it at £5 millions, or even at £10 millions sterling, 



PROSPECTS OF THE REVOLUTION 355 

per annum, it will be immediately evident that this is 
quite insufficient to pay the annual charges due by 
Russia to foreign countries. 

The first of these is, of course, interest on debt. 
The Public Debt of the Empire has risen from £500 
millions in 1889 to about <£750 millions at the beginning 
of 1905 ; and the charge on this account in the Estimate 
for 1905 is £32 millions sterling, of which the great 
bulk is due to French and other foreign holders. The 
guaranteed railway bonds and Bank of Nobility mort- 
gages held abroad, estimated at about £70 millions, 
require an annual payment of, say, £3 millions. In 
addition, there are State payments for the purchase 
of war material abroad, and private payments of 
profits and interest to the foreign owners of enter- 
prises and investments in Russia and Russians living 
abroad, charges probably amounting to at least another 
£10 millions. Mr. Lucien Wolf estimates that "the 
Russian Empire, as a trading concern, is carrying on 
its great business at an annual loss of at least 250 
million roubles." It seems to me that this is an 
under-statement, that the difference between the surplus 
exportation and the foreign charges it ought to meet 
amounts to a deficit of at least £30 millions per annum, 
a sum, let me remark, equal to a half of the whole 
product of taxation, properly so-called, in the Empire. 

The reader unacquainted with the history of the 
great financial system built up by M. Witte will ask 
how this terrible deficit is covered, and how, after 
covering it, the Treasury can hold a huge store of 
gold in the vaults of the State Bank. These magicians 
keep their secrets well, and no full and precise account 
of their resources and manoeuvres can at present be 
given. The fact that a National Assembly, even if 
called only for consultative purposes, would demand 



356 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

some further honesty and publicity in the sphere of 
national finance is, indeed, probably the most sub- 
stantial objection that the oligarchy has to any such 
reform. But the main fact is plain and incontestable : 
the regular deficits are met by new borrowing, the 
interest of new loans is paid out of the new. The 
vaunted gold reserve consists of unspent margins of 
the loans of the last twenty years, reinforced by the 
produce of the State gold mines (three or four millions 
sterling a year), and latterly by a forced increase of 
the paper currency, and by draining the savings and 
provincial banks of their gold reserves.* If such is 
the reckoning under peace conditions, how much worse 
is it when we take into account the expenditure on the 
war, the prospect of a heavy indemnity, and the costs 
of replacing destroyed property ? In his last Budget 
M. Kokovtsev did not dare to publish any estimate 
of the cost of the Japanese campaign, which, after 
fourteen months, cannot have amounted to less than 

* Criticisms of the above purport were replied to in the London Daily 
Chronicle of April 3, 1905, by Mr. Arthur Raffalovitch, the Russian Financial 
Agent in Paris. The reply does not, I think, touch the main facts on which 
I have rested. Mr. Raffalovitch says that the stock of gold at the disposal of 
the Bank of Russia at the end of 1904 was 1022 million roubles, or 494 
millions more than was legally necessary to cover the note issues, " and if to 
this is added the gold stock of the Treasury, the margin for the new issue of 
notes of credit would amount to 711 million roubles." (Cf. p. 131.) But 
a further issue of notes, while legally possible, would speedily involve a 
suspension of gold payments and consequent fluctuations in the value of the 
rouble. Mr. Raffalovitch speaks of the " extraordinary " Budget expenditure 
as having gone "almost exclusively in the development and the amelioration 
of the national resources " (an amiable paraphrase for Port Arthur, the Pacific 
Fleet, and the Manchurian Railway !) ; and he adds ; " from 1889 to 1903 
Russia has received in money as the net product of foreign loans contracted 
by her a sum of only £48 millions. The other operations which have swollen 
the figures of the Russian debt have been the conversion of Government stock 
at 6, 5, and 4-| per cent, to 4, 3|, and 3 per cent., or the purchases of railways 
by the State, which has replaced the companies' shares by its own stock. 
Russia has used her credit abroad much less than many people think." The 
meaning of the last sentence, if it has any, escapes me. 



PROSPECTS OF THE REVOLUTION 357 

£150 millions sterling, without counting the loss of 
Port Arthur, the sunk fleet, and other property.* But 
the stoppage of this bloodshed will in no way solve the 
problem of Russian finance. 

For what, in brief, is the position ? The Tsardom 
has no available gold reserve of any size ; its subjects 
cannot pay more taxes ; the railways, in which it has 
sunk hundreds of millions, as I have shown, do not yield 
a profit ; while its only considerably profitable business, 
the spirit monopoly, is insufficient to provide a balance 
of normal revenue. Its debt is held abroad, and, after 
draining the peasantry of everything but the barest 
minimum of food, it cannot pay the interest except by 
new borrowing. Every loan is raised on harder terms, 
and every time a larger part has to be left abroad to 
meet its obligations. Finally, there is the immediate 
prospect of a heavy indemnity, and the certainty of 
other heavy war charges which will mean Budgetary 
deficits for years to come. If this does not justify 
the analogy of the " Humbert safe," let the name of 
that distinguished lady never more be mentioned. By 
prodigal but skilful expenditure in keeping up prices 
on the chief foreign Bourses, an air of solvency has 
been maintained so far, but revolution is not cured 
by petty trickery. Paris is tired and sick of its 
" ally " ; and Berlin cannot be counted upon to go 

* The St. Petersburg correspondent of Le Matin (March 31, 1905) offers 
the following estimate of Russian losses: Killed, wounded, and prisoners, 
plus 7000 sick per month, make an approximate general total of 435,000, 
leaving at Linevitch's disposal no more than 300,000 men. £90 millions 
is given as the cost of the Manchurian Eailway with the up-keep of the 
line, the losses caused by the Chunchuses, the construction of the city 
and port of Dalny, and of Port Arthur. War expenses and foreign loans 
amount to £57 millions, State securities £15 millions, the loss of 1480 guns 
£1 million, confiscation of merchantmen £1 million, and the loss of the fleet 
£16 millions. Thus, including the recent internal loan, the war has cost, so 
far, two milliards of roubles (£200 millions). 



358 RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION 

further. As a last resort, the State can revert to a 
paper currency, and impound all the gold reserves of 
the Treasury and the Imperial Bank, which, in the 
latter case, stand as security against its advances to 
trading concerns. The prospect for the bank is in 
any case gloomy enough, for it has been diminishing 
its cash assets and increasing its speculative transactions 
in recent years. But a return to paper currency would 
be a crushing blow to Russian credit, and it will be 
delayed as long as possible. 

However inadequate may be this review of the last 
thirty -five years of Russian public life, the general 
course of events in the Empire has been indicated ; 
and, while the growth of the movement of national 
liberation has been shown to justify the faith of the 
friends of Russian freedom, and to give assurance of a 
happier future, the revolution has been traced to the 
inexorable operation of economic law rather than to any 
personal efforts, however heroic. At the outset, in 
words penned ten years ago beside the Volga at Nijni 
Novgorod, it was suggested that the oligarchy had 
evoked forces the character of which it did not under- 
stand, and which would presently prove fatal to it. 
This is what has happened. The revolt of the 
" intellectuals," and the subsequent revolt of the 
workmen, have hastened an inevitable development. 
Bureaucracy can only live by force and hypnotism. But 
to-day even the peasantry are awakening to a conscious- 
ness of their wrongs and their powers ; and, incapable 
and insolvent in every part, defeated and humiliated in 
the enterprise to which it had already sacrificed the 
welfare of its subjects, and yet afraid of bringing back 
a chagrined and disaffected army to the sight of its 
ravaged homes, the tyranny is at length caught between 



PROSPECTS OF THE REVOLUTION 359 

the devil of the revolution and the deep sea of the war 
costs. There it stands, pitifully, ludicrously obstinate, 
while the ground slowly crumbles beneath its feet. 
The end is not yet. Thousands of new victims may be 
swept away into prison and exile, years of bloodshed 
may pass, " strikes " developing into local insurrection, 
and, if this be crushed, into a campaign of destruction 
and revenge in town and country, ere the people's will 
becomes supreme. But the result can be none other. 
The immense potentialities of the Russian mind are in 
nothing more signally shown than in this desperate 
fidelity to the ideal of social liberty. The democrats of 
the dark empire must fight their own battle ; but our 
pulse beats faster as we think of the great hazard they 
have cast, and all that for them and the world depends 
upon the issue. A nation once really aroused cannot be 
suppressed, any more by modern than by ancient con- 
trivances. Determined to be free, it is already free. 
By ways of war or by ways of peace, soon or less soon, 
the revolution will succeed, and this great people, long 
thwarted, will take its rightful place among the free 
and progressive States of the world. 



FEINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, LONDON AND BECCLES. 



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